So much for being a stop motion wizard! There was NO magic today. I was on set for four hours and only got about thirty good seconds of animation. My set keeps falling apart, my puppet is terrible, she can't stand up under her own weight- how do I animate a dance with a puppet who can't stand on one leg without falling over?!- my flying rig is a pain in the ass to use. I came in on my day off to animate but it looks like if I want anything of use for my final I'm going to need to take tomorrow off work to try again and hope the magic is on this time. Maybe if I replace both her legs. The problem seems to be weak hips, or ankles, or both. I did make her limbs replaceable. Arg, why do I have to be scheduled to work so much during finals? This is so frustrating!

I decided to go ahead and upload on to Youtube all the animations I've been doing for like.... the past two years. (Well, the best ones. There are a lot I did NOT include.)
HERE THEY ARE.
Heavy Lifting
Brain and Betty Lip Sync
Wind Blowing (this one is set to private because its a scene from a story that ins't mine. I didn't think I had permission to go posting random scenes when the whole story isn't finished.)
Goofy Goes Camping
Vampire lip sync (current favorite!)
Stop Motion Puppet in Despair

I couldn't get my Netflix to work yesterday so I've been marathoning my Darkwing Duck boxed sets. I'm making the mistake of letting myself get into this again knowing that only 52 of 91 episodes are and probably ever will be on DVD (and pretty much don't seem to be online), and the comics will be ending in October, probably permanently since the merge of Disney and Marvel. (I had a secret wish that if the comic continued for long enough, I could someday draw for it.) SAD PANDA. Fandom is no substitute because out of morbid curiosity I took a glance at that to see what existed, and it's pretty much all really creepy. I guess all I can do is quietly mourn the loss of one of my all-time favorite cartoons.

I'm thinking of putting together a "this is why you are an animator" video to inspire me. what well-animated scenes in animation can you think of that make you think "fuck yeah that was cool-looking"? even just a moment. or an entire fight, or song, or whatever.
Just wondering. I can only think of so many off the top of my head...
I'll show you what I've got when its done. ...or maybe it won't ever be done but I can show what I got until I think of another good one...
current or past animations applicable. As well as high end Disney shit or Saturday morning brain melty-ness. Even American or Japanese, whatever.

I started my thesis idea wanting to draw a mermaid, because thats the sort of cartoons eight-year-old me would have wanted to watch, and what I want to draw. But I was told my story works better if I just keep the character as a fish. Mostly, I think, this is because mermaids are off limits to 2D animators, because of The Little Mermaid and Ponyo, the way ants are off to 3D animators (and I think birds but I'm not sure.) So I will just have to draw mermaids in my spare time, and keep my story about a fish and a bird and their adventure. hmmmm.
I think I wanted to do a mermaid because I thought if I could draw half-animals half-people, I could show off my art more. Maybe I should start thinking of stories with fauns or centaurs or harpies or something?

....nah who am I kidding, I really wanted to draw a mermaid.

WRITERS, I NEED YOU! and even people who can't write necessarily but have good ideas.
I'm in animation grad school, right? So that means... I have to animate a thesis. BUT I DON'T NOW WHAT TO DRAW.
SO! if you have any short story ideas, or even vague prompts that would help a lot, and I'll animate one eventually. Needs to be short, like 4 minutes-ish, with not too many characters and not too dialogue heavy.
so you could go write the whole thing for me if you want and save me the effort, LOL! or just prompt me some locations, characters, genres, conflicts or story ideas and that would help a lot.
nothing sci-fi, I suck at sci-fi.
THANKS!!!

EDIT

variations on fairy tales, mythology and folklore are perfectly acceptable. It doesn't have to be an AWESOME story as long as the animation is great.

AWWWW I thought for our lip syncing assignment I'd get to pick the dialogue and invent my own characters but we have pre-recorded dialogue and model sheets. I'm gonna be drawing other people's characters my whole career, lemme do my own here! Betty Boop doesn't look easy to lip sync anyway, her mouth is too small.

I got a Darkwing Duck model sheet in my class and now I totally wanna make a Darkwing Duck FANIMATION. if only I knew digital. After this jobs ends I will study some more Toon Boom Studio....

so once again I've gotta write a paper for class and once again I picked feminism as my topic. (Sorta. we had to pick 3 topics and my professor chose which one I'll write about.)
so last time it was "Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy" and this time its "Females in Animation". Because it occurred to me how few girl cartoon characters there are (especially between the 1920-60's, except Betty Boop), and what we do currently have are princesses and, like, Hannan Montana, or something.
(I actually don't watch a lot of the recent cartoons these days so I don't know who is a good/bad example.)
If anyone knows of any books, articles, movies, blogs etc on this topic I would love to hear from you.
Of course I'll do my own research as well but if you HAPPEN to know of any, that'd be great.
cheers!

Help needed!
At some point, I'm pretty sure SOMEBODY on my friends list made a post, or linked to a post, that included a scanned latter from like the 1940's from the Disney company to a woman who applied for a job, but was rejected because she was a woman. We're on the Disney module in my "History And Techniques of Character Animation" class, and I think it would make for a really interesting discussion topic. Does anyone know where I can find it?
ffff, deleted my feminist icon. Guess Wolfram will do.