Yesterday ruled. We went to see a friends photography exhibit at Tennozu Isle station. A very cool exhibition and nice to chill out by the ocean.

After that we went to see a legendary 1970s punk band called Totsuden Danboru at a live house called 七針 (nana hari/seven needles) near Hatchobori station. Such a cool spot to see a show.

It was the last day of the 30 day animation class yesterday. Waking up today with no animation assignment in my inbox is an odd feeling.

There was a survey at the end of it asking about what I learned. I think the thing that is sticking with me about the class is not going into an animation without a plan.

Before starting the course, I would go into an animation and start drawing frame one and then frame two. After the class, I know the animation technique deeper. I can get a point across with a lot fewer frames.

On the way home from our show last night, I kept thinking about how punk bands in the eighties spray painted bedsheets with their logo on them. My first band made one and it was SOOOO important to us to have it behind us at every show.

I kinda want to make one for our next show but I already have to carry 1000 pounds of merch on the train.  ( ^ . ^ ) \m/

Two days in to the animation class. There is a lot of use of graphs and timelines which I am into. Also, the underlying theme, so far, is animation uses a lot of physics. Things fall, bounce, squish, stretch, and overshoot a bit when they stop.

I am starting a one month animation class tomorrow. Thought it would a cool self present for my upcoming birthday. At first I thought I would start it on my actual birthday but why wait to start learning. I am very curious to see if my skill levels up. 

Spent some time yesterday making an animation in Rough Animator for a flyer coming up. I found an old dance step illustration from the 1960s and created panels from them. There are only six panels so I created a transition panel to try and smooth things out. Turned out pretty good but I need to practice hands and faces a lot more.

Very thankful for the medicine that is keeping the cough that started last Wednesday night. I am so zonked from it though that I made zero progress on the video I need to finish before the cherry trees start blooming in Tokyo. I have about three weeks to get it done. Spent the whole weekend practicing animation in Rough Animator. Nothing but false starts though. I do thing each false start was one better than the last though...so progress?

Once a week I am visiting designmanifestos.org and reading a design manifesto. They are very inspiring so it's hard to resist temptation to go through a lot of them each visit.

All things on Fake is the New Real are amazing. Hard to choose just one to recommend. It's full of wonderful maps, calendars, and twitter bots.

I want to start playing with the typography inspirations I am finding on 1950s era Jazz album covers. I thought nth-child would come to the rescue for this but looks like you can't get at words or letter with it.

A bit of digging around and I found the javascript for what I need called Lettering.js. It gets you spans on individual words and letter where you need it. It does it in an a11y compliant way as well which rules.

Tried it out for about 20 minutes and it was very fun. Definitely a tool, used with some restraint, I am going to use a bunch in the future.