Old Art | High School [Part 3 - Animations] (Patreon)

I took an animation class that was comically outdated in its software. This was like... 2011, so we definitely should've been learning in flash or something, but instead we were using this insane program from the late 90s which you can see in the above gif.  I remember it was so old that one of the limited export options was "export to Internet Explorer 98". Lmao.

Unlike my art pieces from high school, I actually think these animations are quite good. It's clear looking back that I have a pretty good grasp on the basic principals of animation. This was essentially a blow-off class for me. I remember coming in and being like. WAY better than everyone else. That sounds conceited but it's been a decade and none of those kids are going to read this now so I get to be honest about how talented I was~

You still can't embed YouTube videos on Patreon (for some reason???), so if you want to watch the other animations, you'll have to click the links below.

Liftoff 

This was a paper animation where we drew all the frames by hand, brought them into the aforementioned horrible ancient software, and then inverted it. Seriously, look how bad this software looks! Look at the blur on the title at the start of this video. That's how it always looked. This thing was born at 144p in 4:3 ratio.

I'm certain the reason that we learned this program instead of something a human might use is because the teacher was deeply unqualified and knew how to use this, but didn't want to learn how use Flash.

Whoops.

Cultivation 

A little whiteboard stop motion thing. Looks pretty okay! Not much to say about this one.

I remember that another girl in the class was doing a send up of Bad Apple for this project and I remarked on it, positively. The girl looked at me like a deer in the headlights because now she knew that I knew we were both nerds. Then the teacher overheard us and she asked what Bad Apple was, looked it up, and told the girl she couldn't do that because "somebody had already made it" and she had to start her project from scratch.

I still kind of feel bad about that, tbh. I mean, it was the teacher's fault, not mine, but you know.

Discovering the Deep Blue 

This one was a group project done in stop motion with construction paper. I've actually done a lot of stop motion work and I think I'm quite good at it! Unfortunately, this was a group project. I am confident in saying that all the parts that look good were done by me and all the parts that look bad were done by not me.

I remember that I was the one who did like 90% of the construction paper cutout work, and in fact after I saw how bad everyone else was at this I just told them to get to work animating it while I did all of the visuals for the back half, starting at the big jellyfish. That's why the opening shot of the boat and the diver floating with the smaller fish is so choppy.

Also! This transition with the jellyfish! WHY IS THERE A BLUE SHEET OF CONSTRUCTION PAPER CREEPING IN THERE??? God, I bet this drove me fucking crazy. Hey gang, what the fuck is that doing in the jellyfish transition? Gang. C'mon, gang.

Anyways, if you're an animation teacher in an all skill levels animation class, I think group projects should be illegal. Thanks.