seagulls also love doritos

I did this at the last stop motion club meeting. It's my first time animating cut out paper, or really seriously animating anything in physical space, and I'm really happy that it came out as well as it did (I was kind of expecting a train wreck). Animating paper is so much fun, really hard to keep everything in the right spot (none of this except for the background sheet and the blue stripes where fixed down), but fun nonetheless. Work also goes a lot faster since it's all straight ahead with no turning back. I probably only spent around 3-4 hours actually animating it and a couple more to get things figured out, cut out, and set up. I had also just finished up my pantomime just a couple of days before this so my mind was still in animation mode, which certainly helped make this come together. I'm definitely happy with how loose things ended up feeling despite not being able to deform any of the shapes or work with distorted frames. Everything stayed exactly the same except for the wings, which were only three interchangeable shapes and still read surprisingly well.

This was made with a camcorder checkout out from IT and Frame by Frame, a super piece of freeware (not too mention the only good and really workable stop motion freeware for Mac that I could find). http://web.mac.com/philipp.brendel/Software/FrameByFrame.html

fishing for complementary angles

Our latest assignment in traditional animation was to create a short pantomime to work on body language and emotional change. On this assignment I started to understand things at another level (levels, which I'm sure are infinite, but learning is learning!) especially with overlapping action. I've started paying so much more attention to that lately and really try to work with it. I also wanted to work on animating a more interesting and graphic character. Looking back I feel I should have pushed the designs further and paid more attention to keeping them there in the animation. I know the story and motivation really doesn't make sense anymore, since so many things were cut and reworked, but he is barefoot for a reason! As far as the motion goes, it could definitely be tightened up and plused more as well as made less swimy (haha!...). What really made things for me though was during the critique so many people let out a sincere sympathetic "Awww" when he became sad. It's so satisfying when you create work that people connect with, and really, that's at the heart of all art. As with every assignment it was a great learning experience and I look forward to taking everything from this into future projects.

thar be bars arounds these parts

This summer I did some fiddling with collage and the like. That's how this ended up happening. The speech bubble has a cut out transparency glued to it functions as a dry erase board. I also taped some rare earth magnets to the back of it and they do a fabulous job of holding it up, despite the weight. All the materials except for the glue, paint, and magnets I got for free too, they were just going to be thrown out unless claimed.

we are so happy together

One day I got a fortune cookie that said that.

On another day I made this:

monotyping

In printmaking we're starting off with monotypes. This is my first one which was done to test out several different media. There will be many more, enough to make a book in fact.

seegoals

Some sketchbook stuff from this summer. Seagulls are rather funny looking birds.