Every Bunny Dance Now

My goal for this year has been to do one post a month.  Unfortunately April managed to slip past me in a chaotic blur, so hopefully I'll be able to do two posts this month to make up for it. Wish me luck!

To pick up where we left off, the Spring Fashion Tea was a success. Well, let's say 95% successful (we had some technical glitches with the microphone and some of the quick changes needed to be a little quicker).  Overall, though, everyone seemed to have fun with it.  It was more than just some little store fashion show, we had associates from all over the store model everything from casual summer party attire to a beautiful wedding dress for a spring/summer wedding.  And the associates that modeled brought family members to model with them -- parents, children, grandchildren -- so we had a wide range of ages.  We all really bonded together over the show.  Thank you to everyone who participated!!

With the Spring Fashion Tea behind me, I was finally able to focus more on my animation.  I kept with the Spring theme and crocheted this little guy to be the star of my next short. 

Adorable Springtime Bunny

I just love bringing my amigurumi to life!!  And now that it's actually nice out (So long, Winter!) maybe I can find a way to incorporate my little creatures into a pixilation short.  Oh ho ho.... the wheels are turning!

For now, please enjoy my latest short, BunnyDance. It's time to think Spring!!


BunnyDance from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Macy's Spring Fashion Tea

Macy's Prom Fashion Show was a great success!!

Twelve local high school students participated in our event, sporting Prom dresses from our Juniors Department.  They strutted their stuff on the red carpet laid out in the center of the store, showing off not only the wonderful dresses but also the fantastic makeup applied by our cosmetics team.  We had special lights, a DJ, the works!  Everyone looked amazing!

What was my role in all this?  Besides making a few phone calls and explaining the run-down of the event to the girls (and their mothers) who came into the store to pick out their dresses, I also handled the back stage work, i.e. getting the girls where they needed to be for show time and giving each girl their cue to head out onto the runway. 

I was by no means alone in this production, however.  My coworker Lisa made several phone calls and made sure the two girls who were running late (they had their SATs right before the show) got dressed and in line just in time!  Beth Ann stayed in Juniors with me while we waited for everyone to arrive and lined most of the girls up while I checked on the status of the remaining two.  Nicole made announcements all morning telling people about the event and Sarah read off all the information about the dresses during the show.  And of course, our manager Kelly got us the DJ, which really livened up the event.  It was definitely a team effort.  It was fun, it was stressful, but it was totally worth it.

It went so well, in fact, that we are planning an even bigger show for April 5th! I will once again be in charge of making sure everyone knows when to walk.  This time, however, I also got to use my artsy skills.  I was put in charge of creating the flier for the event. Here it is!


Lisa came up with the wording for the flier and I designed the artwork and layout.  For this show we are including all ages, we even have at least two mother-daughter teams lined up!  I'll be sure to let you know how this one goes!

February in a Nutshell

Hello All!

February has been busy...and short. I mean, it flew!  Anyone else feel that way?

So here's what I've been up to during the previous 28 days of my life:

1.)  Still working on Mila! Still can't show you! (Sorry!)

2.)  We're going to have a Prom Fashion show next weekend at Macy's, so I've been helping out a bit with that.  My manager may or may not become a grandmother on that particular day, so I have been chosen to be her understudy and make sure the show runs smoothly in case she can't be there.  I'll keep you posted on how that goes!

3.) We are also planning a Spring Fashion Tea, though we don't have a date for that yet. It will basically showcase several of our departments including shoes, spring coats and dresses, and our Ralph Lauren section of Misses.   My coworker has taken the lead on setting that up and she asked me to design some fliers for the event.  The artwork is still a work in progress, but here's a sample of what I have so far:

Fancy Tea Lady

4.) Another of my coworkers had a birthday a few days ago. She LOVES penguins (remember the penguin I crocheted last year? That was for her too) so I made her a festive party penguin.  It was a big hit!

Annual Birthday Penguin!

Luckily I had some extra wire from an armature I'm working on so I was able to give her a balloon. Hurray for birthday penguins!

Sketch to Crochet

Happy Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

There, I think we're all caught up. 

It's become rather unlike me to go so long without a post, and for that I do apologize.  Work gets chaotic around the holidays. (In my opinion, all sales associates should be able to dress in full football gear -- helmets, padding, the works -- to be able to fend off all the crazies. Wow, just...wow.) When I wasn't nobly defending my post at work, I spent my spare time working on some stuff for Mila.  Unfortunately for my blog, all Mila work is being kept very hush-hush.  This is fine...except that it kind of looks like I went AWOL or spent the last three months on the couch stuffing my face with pie.

Well, I'm back!

It is January in Pennsylvania and like much of the country we've been hit with several "Polar Vortexes,"  so it has been ridiculously cold.  And rather dreary and snowy at times too. Having nearly forgotten what a sunny day looks like, I came up with the idea to CROCHET THE SUN!  So I did. And here it is.

I found a tutorial on how to sketch in After Effects and thought it was the greatest idea since sliced bread, so I used my newly created sun and made a cheery little springtime short using the sketching technique.  Enjoy!


Sketch to Crochet from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Scotty

Hello all!

Finally I'm able to share with you the bit of experimental animation I've been working on (in between work, other projects and the general craziness that is life.)  As I've mentioned before, I wanted to try and find a middle ground between stop motion animation and my newfound love of After Effects.  That led me to create this short, called "Scotty" as it involves a sound clip of Scotty from Star Trek.


Scotty from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

This short was a lot of fun to make.  Let me take you on a little tour of my creative process:

I started out by crocheting the head.  I stuffed it lightly to give it shape, but never fully closed the bottom.  Then I started on a hand (I only made one) which I sculpted out of wire and then crocheted the skin. 

I tried and tried to get proper lighting in my room, but it just wasn't going to happen. And so, since it was an absolutely lovely day, I MacGyvered my own little studio outside. 

Working on the head rotations

Working on hand movements

 Yes, my "studio" consisted of a T.V. tray with a bottle of body spray taped to it and a roll of tape which I used as a base to hold up the hand.  Fancy?  No. But it worked!

I then proceeded back inside to Photoshop the body pieces out of their environment.

Head floating in space

I uploaded my various head images and created a custom rig in After Effects so that I could freely animate it within the program.  The head had two rigs -- one to move between the different images, and the other (a simple Null) to move the head along the screen.  I repeated this process for the hands (though I only had to upload the images once).  I made a series of mouth images in Flash and proceeded to make a rig for that as well.  The body was constructed in Photoshop and manipulated using the Pin Tool.  Throw in a bit of lighting and here's my workspace:



My animation workspace.  The top box is the mouth rig, the blue boxes are for the hands, and the bottom red box is for the head. Each element also had a null layer for movement.

There you have it:  the making of "Scotty."  This was definitely a learning experience and I look forward to pushing myself even further in the future. 

Stop Motion Rig Test #1

I love the idea of stop motion.  The look and feel of it, the hands-on approach.  But I've found it rather tricky to do as a team of one person without the space for a set that could stay up for an indefinite period of time.  And trying to fit things around my work schedule -- well, if you've ever worked retail you know it isn't exactly a 9-5 gig, so getting the same lighting each day would be an issue all its own.

But I still wanted to try, and so I've been figuring out a way to combine the look of stop motion with the ease and convenience of After Effects.  I found a lip sync tutorial online (Thank you again, Creative Cow), and used it to create a custom rig that would allow me to animate my stop motion images inside of After Effects. 

The following videos show my tests animating a moving head -- its vertical rotation (nodding), horizontal rotation, and ear movement. I'm finally able to combine my love of crochet with my love of animation! 

There are several visual issues with the tests, that being that the lighting is inconsistent and the 'set' itself is very primitive (yes, that is a bottle of body spray holding up the head)  but seeing as though my main focus was to test out the effectiveness of the rig and not create a finished piece, I'd say it was a great success!

I've posted below two versions of each test: One showing the rig and how it functions during the animation process, and the second to show the 'finished' product, without the rig.


head nod test with visible rig from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.



The great thing about the rig is that it greatly simplifies the timeline in After Effects, so that instead of working with picture after picture, you have one controller that effects them all. And if you turn the components of the rig into Guide Layers, you won't see them when you render.


  head nod test no rig from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

head turn and ears test with visible rig from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

head turn and ears test no rig from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

(In case you were wondering, the "L,S,R" of the top rig stands for "Left, Straight, Right," while the "O,M,I" of the bottom rig stands for "Out, Middle, In.")

My next step is to create a hand and do some tests with that.  My goal is to create all the various body parts of a character and animate everything in After Effects. Wish me luck!

Colts Football

 

I don't know anything about football.  I mean, I know the basics and key words like "Touchdown"and "50 yard line," but the rest of the time when the announcer is speaking all I hear is the teacher from Charlie Brown (You know, the one that goes "waa-whaah-wwah-wha-waaa.")

My little cousin, however, LOVES football and asked me to make him one with his favorite team's logo on it.  That was the inspiration behind this Colts Football.

Had some difficulty in the beginning (this was attempt number three) which is odd because it seems like such a simple project.  And frankly, now that it's done and I know what to do, it really was a simple project.  It was pretty fun to make too, once I got the hang of it.

I may still know next to nothing about the actual game of football, but I did learn that making them is a pretty fun pastime.