In which I have the urge to animate. In 3d. And realize I don't have any 3d software.

So I went to school and graduated a few years ago with a degree in Computer Animation. But I never did anything with it other than land jobs doing graphic design/illustration with short bouts of web animation.  Though I enjoy that, I miss telling stories and working on really big creative projects. Sure, I am working on becoming a children's book illustrator and developing my portfolio. I still miss all the 3d animation stuff I used to work on with others, and working with other artists.

I used to animate in Maya and Softimage, and even Lightwave - but when you don't touch the software for five years, you get super rusty. I don't have access to any of those so I'm downloading blender, which has been around for a while now. Its also opensource and there are LOTs of tutorials and rigged models to practice on.

Tonight, after doing all my other projects, I took time to read and watch some tutorials, download the software, and try to animate and render a really simple object. I'm happy to say that my little laptop managed to survive rendering (which has claimed many other computers I've used). At a 100 frames, with no story, it's not much to look at but it is a start.

I made an mpeg4 and converted it to a gif with some free software I found online. It sadly adds a watermark, but it doesn't matter in this case. Below is squaretest. Enjoy. It does get hypnotic if you watch it long enough.