So The Boss brought in my old 2D animation teacher/mentor-guy to help out on The Project of Doom.  Mr S, as I shall call him (did anyone else play Final Fantasy Legend II for the Gameboy?  Your teacher, who accompanies you on the first part of your journey, is named Mr S), is a very calm, down-to-earth, laconic sort of guy who makes 2D animation look absolutely effortless, and on whom, while in school, I had the hugest crush in the world.

Today I remembered why.  *facepalm*

He took the pitiful eight drawings of animation I'd painstakingly achieved yesterday, after much arm-waving and angst, and in about an hour whipped out some lovely quick smooth fluid gesture-y rough animation that had me gasping and going, "mew?"  "I hope you're not bored, sitting there watching me," he said.  O, no indeed.  Please.  I will sit here and bask in your awesomeness.

I have a mentor thing, I think.  Anybody else have that, that "You are a total badass in my own field, I will now fall in love with you" problem?  Issue?  Quirk?  What would you even call it?  I'm not sure myself, but I'm sure I would've fallen in love with Patrick O'Brian if I'd ever met him in person ("You write better nautical fiction than anybody: I love you!"), and the man was like ninety!

Such maunderings aside, watching Mr S animate was really eye-opening.  My rough animations are fairly loose, but nothing like as messy as the spilled-spaghetti-style rough sketches he produced.  "Don't worry about drawing on your first pass," he said.  "Just worry about the arcs.  Make it a kind of gesture over time."  Awesome.

And who gets to clean up those spilled-spaghetti sketches?

Hee.

I am learning a lot from this project!