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In my first-year Digital Methods class, all 53 students will be collaborating on a film, and I’m joining in. Each student was responsible for making one image. Then they were assigned an image from another student at random, and they’ll have to move from one image to the next in twenty seconds of animation. At the end of the semester we’ll have a 17:40 minute film. I’m really excited to see how it turns out.

The only thematic requirements were that each still had to contain a red, square-headed cat and a green backpack. My still was made in Maya, using only cubes. I’d been meaning to try something graphically simple in Maya since seeing David OReilly’s stuff, and I wanted to try something with a limited palette of objects and colors. Also, I’m shooting for a less-than-cartoony mood.

It’s been a while since I had a chance to write a post, and here’s why: I packed up all my stuff in Brooklyn, drove a U-Haul truck four thousand miles in two weeks, and I started to teach at CalArts this morning. Here’s a handout I made to explain the video lunchbox. Though the competition is stiff, it might have the most cryptic iconography of any piece of animation equipment. The conversation went like this:

“How about the word “Settings” next to a button?”

“No, how about a top-view of a 1940′s-style chickenhead radio selector switch, along with a circle, square, and triangle, all connected by a segmented line with arrows on each end?”