Happy Yule!

My parents laid off the booze long enough to compromise with school. So, I am taking classes in the Spring but not as many as i had hoped but that is isn't because of financial issues but because it is a gradual incline of cases I have to take with one class before the next or qualify for the next level. So far, i am taking Video Art, Experimental 3D, and Postmodernism in the Visual Arts.

I am making the most of my career towards animation. I am practicing with GIFs and working at improving more digital media and trying to make the most of what I can do as an Animation student to add to my portfolio. Here is an image I did for yule. it can also correspond with X-mas and Winter, obviously.

I named the girl Xtal, which is an abbreviation for Crystal i use in text-messaging. She is a Witch of the Storm. The Ice Princess of the Winter Skies. To name a few titles. In my mind, I had intended on creating her to harness the power of the snowflake sand coming from her hand. However, in the midst of creating the animation GIF, I was more focused on getting it to work. The process, if you will. I was working on how to put two different GIFs together as one.

Little did i know, that it isn't a matter of layering two different files on top of one another, because Photoshop doesn't allow you to upload a GIF only to create them. So, what I did was: As I was working on the glow from the lantern glows and added them them to my GIF of the snowflakes falling and every four layers of the snowflakes, I added a glow. And the snowflakes came from a video I brought into Photoshop and made the frames into layers and limited them by 10 and within a certain selection.

Here is an example: 

So, Merry Yule and X-mas to everyone! I support them both and celebrate X-mas more as a tradition than a religious holiday. And I celebrate Yule because I believe in Pagan traditions and beliefs. I love everything about Yule. It's history, it's traditions that most Christians use today in Christmas, it's colors, it's elements, its objects, and its symbolic metaphors of objects and traditions. It's a beautiful holiday that starts around the Winter Solstice (Dec 21st) and 21 happens to be my favorite and lucky number. It seems to follow me every where like a curse.