here and there

musings of a wandering mind

Category: Design

  • BT Carbon

    Sometimes, during my free time, I want to do all the things, all at the same time. Depending on the state of my executive functioning skills, I might read a book, or clean the house, or get lost in a wikipedia rabbithole, or doomscroll (though I’m getting better about not doing that), or watch a…

  • tl;dr: make stuff, have fun

    Hi there, it’s been a while. I’ve been journaling off and on for some time now. In May of last year, some friends of mine started The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I had heard of it before, and had always been interested in doing it “some day”, so this appeared to be the perfect…

  • The Kid Calico Blog, as an entity of its own, is hungry for knowledge and understanding

    I keep putting off starting my blog in earnest. The perfectionist in me wants to start at the beginning, but to find the beginning has thus far in my life been a futile attempt. The beginning of anything at all, when you really get down to it, is impossibly difficult to find. So this blog,…

  • my first character rig

    Well, I designed and rigged my first character for animation in After Effects, using Duik Angela. The learning curve is a bit steep but there are so many cool features to allow for different types of animated characters. I am excited to continue learning and improving my design and animation skills!

  • chop carry wood water

    Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. I’ve been learning how to do character animation in After Effects, and it’s tedious work, especially when you are getting started. I didn’t really feel ready to post it yet, so instead I made this, to remind myself to get back to working…

  • character rigging

    I am learning how to character rig in After Effects, so today I designed this character, only to realize afterward that I chose a color palette similar to Shaggy from Scooby Doo. C’est la vie. I am looking forward to doing more animation in the coming weeks with my free time.

  • pixel play

    Life has been busy the past few days, so I played with the shape builder tool doing some pixel playing. Something about coloring by clicking feels pretty therapeutic.

  • paper crane

    When I was growing up (younger than ten) our neighbors hosted a Japanese exchange student, who also befriended my family. She introduced me to Totoro, taught my mom how to make sushi, and she also taught me a bit of origami. The crane has always been one of my favorites, I’ve folded hundreds since that…

  • yeah, yeah

    I have this book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Some of the standards are in it, but so are some stories I have never heard of. Take The Adventures of Chanticleer and Partlet, for example. It’s the story of two chickens who venture into the forest to eat nuts. *Spoilers coming.* They do some stuff, and…

  • right here right now

    Making something to post every day is not that hard in theory. I try to finish these pieces relatively quickly, just seeing what I can create in an allotted time. I have been playing around with timing too. It’s a new challenge every day. In the beginning, I would work on a piece during the…