Hardcow Cow Turnarounds

I have been working on some character turnarounds for my Hardcore-Hardcow character.
Next up: a pig, a chicken, and a grab-bag of barn-yard citizens.

Quick Presidential Poster

Just got home from a family trip from Ohio to Georgia - drove lots of country roads and enjoyed lots of southern accents, etc. Witnessed a bad car accident, nearly became a part of it... let's just say, I am extra happy to be bringing some updates to the blog today and all of the future days!

I drew some presidents for my cousin's upcoming event, Five Dollar Funny. Here we have chuckling Abraham Lincoln in tears, as well as a happy little George Washington. The turnaround was a handful of hours last night, start to finish. Just something to get some extra attraction through Facebook and the like. Below is the comp I came to after sifting through various sketches via Photoshop layers.

If you happen to be floating around the Chicago area:

https://www.gorillatango.com/cgi-bin/public/gttv2.cgi?location_number=2&show_id=1050

My cousin was one of my bigger inspirations growing up - he was always the comedian of the family, and he went out of his way to follow that into his adult life. Watching him get where he wanted to go with comedy helped me see that I too can follow my own path as an artist. When he asked if I could make this... I was definitely happy to.

Tumblr post

HARDCOW! Boards, Roughs, Clean Pass

Finals week was especially fun animating, cleaning, and coloring this lovely Hardcore-Hardcow idea I have had for awhile now. The project was for Animation III class, and it is something I plan on revamping, finishing, and reworking the rest of the summer. The bit was featured in the End-of-the-year 134th Annual Student Show at CCAD. Music credit go to locals Hollow Like Me (https://www.facebook.com/HollowLikeMe)! There's 32 seconds here of all that I managed to get done; the summer goal is to finish the thought and story to be a little more complete:
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Space Puppy - Animatic Attack!

Lots of process updates for the animation I plan on making my senior thesis film!

First off, in class, we started timing out the drawings we created for our storyboard:

After these were done, it was time to start timing out the entire piece. My instructor brought up a really good point: I timed things way too fast. We tried playing it at double the time, and lots of scenes instantly read better. Here's the fast pass (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU9mx-JKKOc) vs the double-timed:

After playing with the timing, I came up with this. There are a few drawings missing, but I am overall happy and ready to take another pass at this sometime this summer, as well as really start digging into the animation before senior year begins:

Forthmade - GOD T-Shirts

Two years ago during winter break, I made a series of vector images that depicted different creatures with the word "GOD" slapped across their foreheads. My concept was a mix of playing on the tendency people have to assume as well as the varying personal accounts and definitions people tend to take the meaning of the word to. When my friend asked me to contribute a piece to a project he was doing for class, Forthmade (http://forthmade.com), I was stuck on ideas as to what to put on a t-shirt. After talking with a friend or two, and remembering what brought me to creating the image in the first place, I happily chose this little lion man:

My friend Ian Ballantyne (http://ianerballantyne.com) taught me how to screenprint one weekend, and I ended up with nine new tees as well a handful of other clothes I stamped with the king of the jungle:

As a first experience with t-shits and screenprinting, I am really interested to try again and continue efforts such as this. I still have a handful of shirts left and am wanting to give them to happy new homes! If you are interested, let me know!

REEL! + Motion Graphics class Wrap-Up

Our last assignment in Motion Graphics class was to clean up projects from earlier in the semester as well as to create a demo reel (below) based on the work we'd made through the year as well as other highlights from works we've created.

Kinetic Typography, Sonic Youth "100%: http://vimeo.com/59359904

Ad Graph Collaboration Project, Pratt & Lambert: http://vimeo.com/64993249

The Ad Graph Collaborative project was done with fellow student Jon Yurek (jonathanyurek.com), who designed the graphics for a mock Pratt & Lambert ad from an earlier project (1 of 3 different ads) that I then took into After Effects to move. More collaborative projects are underway for the future. All these pieces will be part of a huge feature playlist in the Kinney Hall hallway gallery at CCAD next school year.
 

Reel 2013 from Sarah Schmidt on Vimeo.

Coffee Enjoyment Character Rig

Here's a character rig I made for Animation III class. The assignment was to take any clip and do a little bit of lip-sync as well as movement to compliment it - using a character rig with Toon Boom's network system. I chose an Office Space Quote and a big slurp noise. This piece was featured in CCAD's 134th Annual End-of-the-Year Student Show.

Here's an older character rig I made in Animation II class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQClBzGx7d4

Cat Rap Process 5 - Final Meow

Here is my final pass at this "Cat Rap" I made in Experimental Animation Class. This piece was featured in the 134th Annual Student Show at CCAD. I took my last pass and pulled new background elements in as well as colored each frame of the cat in with white. I also added a title slate and a music credit slate at the end (music props to The Death Set and their song, "Kittens Inspired by Kittens"). This was a multi-passed rotoscope Animation! Earlier passes: http://sarahmaeschmidt.blogspot.com/2013/04/cat-rap-updates.html

Cat Rap from Sarah Schmidt on Vimeo.

Lottery Roulette GIF/VIDEO

Here's a .gif I made for Experimental Animation class! These are ticket book fronts from The Ohio Lottery. My family owns a small gas station/convenience store out in the middle of central Ohio - at the beginning of the semester, my mom gave me a whole slab of these, saying maybe I could find a use for them. I ended up scanning each individual card three times: once flat, once slightly crumpled, and once (after 'weathering' them with water and sunlight). I used a few scans to 'wipe' the card across the screen to add a different type of strobe effect. 

The concept revolves around the cycle of money associated with lottery. Have worked at a store that sells lottery, I have handed over countless tickets to countless customers: some dedicated regulars, some desperate trash-pickers, some high spenders, and some just looking for a quick jab at 'luck'. Though it can be completely argued that the lottery is a waste of time and money, it's funny when you contrast that fact to the fact that lottery tickets bring in lots of money and support to small businesses. It's also funny when you consider how many tickets come in a book, and the fact that they are all worth $1-20 - that adds up! The money that is given back to a community in kind of twisted little way is compelling - I wanted to highlight the cycle. Money is frivolously spent, intently spent, and desperately spent on lottery tickets: then, once in a while, the money is given back: someone wins. The spending continues. The business is able to stay afloat and continue to serve it's customers. Everybody wins. Upon talking to my mom recently, I heard we hit our biggest winner yet.

Here's a quick, trippy video-version I slapped up on Vimeo:

LottoRoulette from Sarah Schmidt on Vimeo.

Finals! Summer! Hooray!

Haven't updated with proper gusto in awhile - a lot has happened in the past month. Namely, finals. But it's finally over! Summer is finally setting in. Some big things that happened, that I need to put up some posts about:

- Updated Experimental Animation Cat Project, a final project gif/video
- Handful of passes of animatic for Layout and Timing Class/"Space Puppy"
- Handful of passes for Animation III/"Hardcow"
- Rigged Character for Animation III
- Finished/Updated project for Motion Graphics, Demo Reel for Motion Graphics
- "Forthmade" t-shirt screen-printing experience

In the meantime, here is a gif experiment I made in class a few weeks ago of my friend Jeff Ockerse (http://giantfrogfish.tumblr.com). He and I collaborated on a magazine cut-out animation a few months go (http://sarahmaeschmidt.blogspot.com/2013/02/rager-rick.html), and it actually got recognized in the CCAD 134th Annual Student Exhibition.