Ringing in the March Madness

Crunching away on le film. Should be wrapping up animation in the next few weeks and then onto the next challenge: compositing/post-production. But I'll battle my way through that when the time comes. So to keep things active, here are some studies:
Last Tuesday or Wednesday morning I was driving to school and at the very last redlight before reaching campus, this glorious sight entered the cross-walk. After seeing a lot of characters around Valencia...this lady takes the cake. Those are indeed small dogs in her "stroller"--I counted about 7-8 heads bouncing around inside. All these heads/bodies were shooting all over the tiny space. The image that immediately popped into my head was one of those preschool corn poppers that kids push around and the balls bounce around.
Yes, that toy. Not a single pooch was still, they were literally bouncing off the walls. As I'm drawing her all I can think about is her routine---she's obviously out for walk, probably every morning(though I've never seen her before), but what about the dogs? Does she rotate them for every day of the week? Or does the one lucky pooch get the leash while the rest are vacuum-packed into the stroller? Anyways, had to share, I smile every time I see this just because of how bizarre this was. Valencia folk are on the complete opposite end of the "character scale" when compared to Medford folk--so basically, this woman made my year. haha
And then yesterday I made a point of stepping away from my film and focusing on something completely different. Zoo drawing! I was pretty stunned that the African Wild Dogs were out and about--I've never seen them before so I was spent a good deal of time watching those guys. Also the Chacoan look like they're straight out of a Miyazaki film, they have such interesting shapes/proportions. Going out yesterday definitely made me realize how rusty I've gotten, so I need to try and get back into the routine of zoo drawing again---3+ weeks of just film-work really takes its toil on ya. But I really wasn't too focused on drawing, just needed a breather from film-life. Though the film itself is going really well, I'm not burnt-out and I'm crazy inspired every morning when I sit down and start working on an old or new scene. But I know it's very good to step away every once in a while so I made a point of doing that yesterday. And now, back to the grind....