(You'll need the QuickTime plug-in to view this clip.)

It's only about 2 seconds long, but it represented quite a bit of work back in 1999. I'd just gotten my first Wacom tablet, which came bundled with a program called "Dabbler" from Fractal Design. ("Dabbler" eventually became the basis for "Painter", which is now published by Corel.) Dabbler was the first consumer-level program I'd seen which allowed ordinary schlubs like me who didn't have access to expensive cameras and equipment to do actual animation! So I couldn't resist trying it out to create something I'd wanted to see for some time: an animated Tetsuko flexing her biceps!

Well, like I said, creating even this much was more time and effort than I expected; animation is a time-consuming, labor-intensive process! So I didn't get past the "pencil-test" stage. But I am proud of the basic movement I was able to put into this action. I've saved the individual drawings so that, one day, I can clean up, ink and color the animation. (..But I'll probably wind up starting over anyway.)

Right-click (or Control+click) this link to download the file to your hard drive. (3.2 MB)

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© 2005 David C. Matthews