Catepillar Penguin Preview

Hello all! Wow, sorry for the delay in updates. Let's just say that 2012 hasn't exactly gotten off on the right foot. Things are calming down a bit now, I think, so I'm slowly trying to get myself back into the swing of things.

I do love my laptop and the privacy of being able to work in my room, but unfortunately Maya makes it cry in a sort of "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME??" type of way. But luckily this little ole' lappy CAN handle the Adobe Creative Suite, so I've decided to try and teach myself how to animate in After Effects. I've started a simple project and I've already learned so much. I had no idea how similar After Effects and Maya are! I mean, I've worked in AE many times, but usually it was for basic graphic movement or for editing animatics and the like (by the way, I've since learned that Premiere is much better for animatics). I never realized it had such 3D capabilities, a graph editor, the ability to add lights, cameras.... How did I not know this?? Excitement! Now I just need to figure out what I'm doing. ^__^;

This image shows the basic concept of the short I'm working on. The goal is to gain a better understanding of the puppet tool, cameras and lighting, and overall character animation. I'll post the final short whenever it's finished.