Life and Stuff

So I have been trying to keep busy and maintain a balance between all of my interests. Not an easy feat by any means. So the quick rundown. I am taking an Animation workshop. Really helps me focus and hopefully finish a few animations that I have been doing the Pre-production on. Not easy when you have the focus of a gnat. So, the first exercise was working on a cycle. Standard stuff but it is always good to exercise that part of my brain.

Ball Cycle from Vanessa Ramirez on Vimeo.

Next I am trying to beef up my After Effects Muscles by doing tutorials and just trying to do small mini practice videos. I am shooting for weekly. Si se puede!!

After Effects Text Masking from Vanessa Ramirez on Vimeo.

Not exactly groundbreaking but you have to crawl before you steal the fast car. Baby steps people, baby steps.

On the toy front, I am also in a testing phase. I have been trying my hand at different platforms and playing with my sculpting tools. All fun. There is much merriment. Also I am hoping in the next week or two to start my series. Small 5pc first to see if anyone actually wants to buy my stuff. Hey, a girl can dream. So, here is a picture of my latest attempt at a dunny.

Crappy cell phone pictures but hey he has cool hair. Can you guess who he is going to be? Let me know because I have no idea. Well I have an idea, but just the one.

And as for my previous post. My Green Succubus Madl custom is still available and Spankystokes.com was kind enough to write up a post for it here. Check out the link and definitely check out Spankystokes.com it is a good blog all about toys, cool art, and very talented artists.

New Year

I was very excited for the new year last year, and I had very positive outlook. Thankfully I can say that it was truly a great year. By no means was it perfect mind you. I had bad days for sure. Hell I even had a few bad weeks. There was stress and unhappiness like any other year. But there was also progress.

This past year saw me participate in my first art show. I had the opportunity to participate in a few custom toy shows as well. I started working and developing my animations. And I continued to work towards my career goals. And very unexpectedly I found myself reaching out for help and getting a lot of helpful feedback and how to's from people in my career path and in my toy universe.

Before New Year's Day I was also given a lot of great advice and I intend to put it to practice as I tear the shrink wrap off of this brand spankin' new year. I am not necessarily making resolutions, but I am setting goals for myself.

My 2011 goals are simple but they are resolute.

I will continue to work harder, and try to work smarter :)
I will continue to work towards participating in more custom shows and embrace more opportunities (here's to hoping they embrace me back)
I will continue to work towards strengthening and pushing my style as I work towards get into a gallery show or two.
I will continue to push myself and my animations and hopefully make more steps in that direction.
I will take better care of myself so I can abuse myself with lack of sleep when I need to.
And I will try new things regularly.

I know no man (or woman in my case) is promised tomorrow but if I get all 365 days the next year I am going to make it better. More animations, more customs, more painting, more drawing, and above all more growth as an artist. So Cheers to another year. May it be prosperous and filled with some truly awesome moments.

Let's do this.

V