The Roadtrip

Background: acrylic on plexi-glass, animation: acrylic on acetate.

I made some much-needed pencil-cases today, with vintage fabrics and a bit of textilean embellishment.

In Which Mr. Garlic-head Goes To The Drawer (And Picks Out A Smile)

Below are two short little stop-mo pieces I did towards the end of my co-op involving Mr. Garlic-head and a bit of set/prop making. The first one I am generally satisfied with (a minor exception being the drawer-opening bit, which needs a drastically longer amount of read-time), the second a bit less so, as I should have made the puppet *look* at the phone before picking it up and replacing it (the lack of such rendering both occasions as a bit odd-looking in regards to interaction), more defined and legible poses throughout, and a smoother, slower sitting-up at the end - it's a bit abrupt. The piece as a whole is a bit jumbled, but that's not to say there aren't elements that I like, such as the slanted lighting, the leg-swinging action, and the happy accident of the smile 'thinning out' at the end to reveal the character's natural emotion underneath (which I realized is difficult to see here).
...'t's what practice is for though, and learning to pinpoint areas in need of improvement, generally does lead to improvement in the future.






And a still from shooting:



The dresser is carved from pink styrofoam, the chair made from scrap wood, the backwall from cardboard (incidentally the boards are running vertically instead of horizontally), wall plaster, creative-memories-type paper and more pink styrofoam for the trim, and the floor being a placemat find from our good friend Value Village.

Experimentalism of the TableTop Variety

sliced bread's got nothin' on this

Ah, stop motion. Delving into this little niche of the animation world has in some ways drawn me back to memories of those creative aspects of my childhood. The 'Cutting-and-Gluing Box'* - brimming with popsicle sticks, styrofoam meat trays, toilet paper rolls and leftover sewing scraps comes to mind (as do the flimsy cardboard creations Mel and I would ambitiously whip up), plus an interest in miniature doll-housing, mold-making and sewing - now coupled with animation, design and story-telling (a writing aspect) to boot ... what could be better?

*this was only slightly differentiated from the recycle box, and that was our next best option (though sometimes said ambitious creations would mysteriously end up there too).

monsieur garlic-head

Just a little piece I did a couple weeks ago. It felt a bit fast at 15 fps so I slowed it down to 12 and that seems to work better.