Objects At Rest

explorations in audio and moving imagery

Author: Grant

  • StopMo Community Roundup for July 2006

    A growing number of stop motion animators are using services like blogger, wordpress, or moveabletype to run their webs sites. As such, the sites are usually accompanied by a web feed (RSS feed) which allows people to subscribe and keep up with new postings without having to surf around the web all day. It makes it possible to assemble a personal newspaper with the latest updates from the things you want to follow.

    I usually keep up with stop motion information via web feeds (aka RSS feeds) and Bloglines as opposed to surfing and clicking around on the web. It saves a lot of time and needless clicking around and I can keep up with what’s going on.

    In my Bloglines reader I have a handful of sites such as Darkmatters, Ubatuber, Notes from Halfland, Scarlet Letters, AnimateClay, and Red Hatchet Films. Sites such as these offer fairly regular postings with updates occurring either many times a week or at least something each month. I would love to see the sites from Nick, Lio, Stopmotionanimation.com and Stopmoshorts.com offer web feeds. If they have feeds then either they aren’t advertising them or making them easily discoverable or I’m missing something.

    Big thanks to Jeffrey and Shelley for sending some very nice gifts. I got a limited edition woodcut print from the “Jenny Greenteeth” project.

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    I also have a collectible button for the “Halfland” project.

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    Other animators are also getting into the online store venture with items available from Phil Dale and Mike Brent. There’s probably more out there. I wonder if there is some way to compile a directory of stopmotion shopping somewhere to see all this merchandise at one location.

    Tennessee Reid continues to post various animations he finds on the web. Mike Brent also continues to add to his collection of top-notch animation clips with some recent work by Suzie Templeton. Mike has also posted some info and a sample of the importance of music to film/animation. A lot of films are making their way onto places like YouTube which illustrates how the web can help expose people to work they might never see or consider in the first place. Michael, at Red Hatchet Films, has also put some of his work online and is using a service where, apparently, he gets compensated financially if viewers click the ad at the end of the film. He has started a series called Dredd Manor which looks promising. His film, A Winter’s Tale, is also really good. I particularly like the way each scene is viewed through the windows of the house like little vignettes.

    Jeffrey’s film, Jenny Greenteeth continues to develop and his site is one of the more consistent production blogs with many behind the scenes photos and information about his film posted fairly regularly. Shelley’s Halfland project is also unfolding with recent work in set design. Sven at Scarlet Letters has posted some excellent information regarding metal armature creation and also posted animation tests worth checking out. Leevi continues to upload scenes from his HarmoniCa project. I notice some missing scene numbers so he is either shooting out of order or holding them offline until the day we may get to see the complete work. In any case it just gets better and better with every clip he releases.

    Lastly, my film Man Drawing… has been submitted to a handful of film festivals but no word yet on acceptance. My Vitruvius project continues with June and July activities consisting of building the secondary stage, more puppet costume work, lighting and camera tests, and framegrabbing software tests. I’ve also started running some test animations for compositing tests and choreography of motion.

  • Vitruvius Character Development

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    May 2006 was character development month complete with armatures, mask-making, and clothing. The puppets for the Vitruvius project are made of aluminum wire and epoxy putty for “bonesâ€? in the arms, torso, pelvis, legs, and feet. I’m using the Nick Hilligoss T-shaped tie down method for the feet.

    The head construction starts with balsa wood and hot glue which bulks out the shape and also provides weight reduction. A thin layer of Super Sculpey is applied and the heads are baked. The eyes are wooden beads with pre-drilled holes and are baked inside the sockets. I sprinkled some talcum power into the eye socket via the pre-drilled hole to help the eyes move around easier (that’s a tip from Strider I believe).

    I use Sculpey flex over the wire armature to bulk out more body shape and then bake the whole armature. The Sculpey flex allows me to create tighter joints while reducing fatigue on the armature wire over time since the edges of the Sculpey near the join are not rigid like regular Sculpey or epoxy putty. Theoretically I will bend my wire joints over time but reduce the possibility of the body mass eating into the wire.

    I patch the joints with liquid latex and build up a latex skin over the whole armature. I used polyester fabric and hot glue for the clothing. Some of the edges of the clothes have a strip of aluminum wire hot glued in a seam to allow for positioning. The robes are made of wire-ribbon, purchased at Michael’s Arts & Crafts, and glued together like an accordion to simulate cloth folds. With the polyester tunics, I was able to run a cigarette lighter quickly across the edges to cauterize the fabric’s plastic material and keep the edges from fraying while also keeping the fabric from becoming to bulky. It also eliminated the need for sewing edges.

    Here are some photos to illustrate various stages of character development for Vitruvius.

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  • My First Stop Motion Tests: 2003 – 2004

    Prior to 2003 I had been working with Lightwave and 3D computer graphics as my medium for independent film projects. As it turns out those projects never left the pre-production phase because in 2003 I made a wooden ball-and-socket joint to see if it would simulate the function of a metal armature. The results worked well enough for me to develop a full character armature (which is what you in the test video). I had never done stopmotion animation before but found the armature was a pleasure to work with and the results were sufficient. Subsequently, I made the short film “Man Drawing a Reclining Woman” using this method for the two characters in the film.

    The wood is basswood, which is stronger than balsa but still very light, and the wooden beads have pre-drilled holes that can hold a section of square basswood or a dowel rod pretty well. For the joints and plates I used the open hole socket method and 4-40 bolts and nuts to sandwich the beads between the plates. Superglue and hot glue were used to hold various non-moving parts together.

  • Director’s Statement: Man Drawing a Reclining Woman

    Thank you Mark, Shelley, Jeffrey, Mike, Ale, Sven, Scott, Ward, and others that have shared your thoughts about my film “Man Drawing a Reclining Woman”. I’m in the process of crafting a “statement” about the work or my intentions with my projects. Some film festivals ask for a director’s statement so I figure it might be good to have something ready to go. This is my first draft of ideas that stem from the thoughts of those that have seen my film to date. I personally don’t feel to keen on stating some of these things since I worry that it may rob the viewer (or even myself) of serendipitous discovery of something meaningful in the work. But this whole thing is an experiment so here it goes.

    The film “Man Drawing a Reclining Woman” is an experimental short subject. It is not intended to be a narrative with a protagonist overcoming an obstacle to attain a goal which is the basis for so many films.

    • My intentions in the film are, on a very basic level, about objective observation of a man drawing a woman.
    • A second level of intent is to explore artistic observation between the artist and the subject and to extend that idea between the viewer and the film.
    • A third level of intent is the play between opposites such as man/woman, the bisected nature of the woodcut, art/pornography, and viewer/viewee.
    • A fourth level of intent was to follow up on the concepts of opposites with a self-referencing notion that this film is about a man drawing a woman but in fact the characters/actors are not people. The deliberate artificiality of the puppets (ie. exposed armatures and crude rendering), artificial environments, and the final artificial manner in which the work would be seen (ie. theaters and television screens) are intended to be consistently obvious throughout the work. The characters are introduced fully clothed in a mechanical manner reminiscent of a wind up toy only to be dismissed to the nothingness from whence they came, nude in fact, by the act of voyeurism. The fact that the drawing device at the center of the entire piece is a man-made convention to re-create a person on a piece of paper is also intended to provide a persistent anchor to reference this level of deliberate artificiality.

    My film states what it is about, shows what it is about, and then starts referencing and juxtaposing those themes. That’s really all that is going on.

    One lady at the festival commented on the fact that the woman had voluptuous breast but the man had no penis. That observation not only provided some comic relief to our chat about my potentially pretentious film but it also hit on one of the themes I was exploring much more effectively than I had hoped. In my opinion, she was in fact picking up on a reference to the whole social and cultural approach to the depiction of sexuality and the nude figure in art and commercialism (ie. the anatomical nature of toy dolls such as Barbie and Ken).

    One young man at the festival provided unsolicited comments about the more obscure levels of the film, going so far to talk about objectification and sexuality in film. Mark and the reviewer at creative loafing picked up on the aspects of observation, art, and the role of the viewer of the film. All of these comments, even with the caveat that most people claim to not understand the work, reflect that I was able to get some observable motifs across pretty well.

    With all that said, the flaws that may be present in my work and which concern me are whether I’m misleading a viewer with too much obscurity, too much information, or superficial style choices that provide no indication that the film is more open and interpretive than narrative entertainment. Perhaps parts of the film imply one genre but then deliver on something else? That might explain why some people state they don’t understand it while at the same time they are able to describe objects and events in ways that I intended.

    I do know that I want enough layers of information and obscurity in my work so people can assign their own meanings. The goal is to find a balance and a way to communicate my intentions in an effective but flexible way. I know I feel that way about many songs that I love. Many songs have lyrics that make no real sense when you read them but those phrases when embedded in the context of the song with its instrumental containers create vivid visuals that are meaningful to me.

  • Atlanta Film Festival Wrap-Up

    Animation News

    The Animation Extravaganza took place Thursday night and I would estimate that about 300 people attended both shows. My film, Man Drawing a Reclining Woman, was the first to be shown which surprised me since I thought the line-up would be different. It is a different experience to see your film in a room with hundreds of other people and all I could see was the flaws in my work. But, I think I have learned some things from the whole experience that I hope to apply in my future projects.

    Here is the blurb about my film from Creative Loafing’s article on the film festival’s animation venue.

    “‘Man Drawing a Reclining Woman’ provides the story behind the Albrecht Durer woodcut of the same name, and implies that great art outlives both the artist and the subject.” By Curt Holman, Published 06.14.2006, Creative Loafing”

    It is both an honor and a humbling experience to be in the same billing with other works of higher quality and clarity of craft. Some of my favorites were the 2D animations Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot, Juxtaposer, and Chickenheads / Fluidtoons. Brett W. Thompson, the creator of Chickenheads, is a local artist and his flash animations seem a bit like Bruce Bickford in terms of organic transformation of objects. I told him he was the Bruce Bickford of Flash animation.

    Stop motion was represented as well with the films Dragon, Loom, and Ichthys. Dragon was a nice mix of stopmotion and 2-D animation. Ichthys was a technical marvel with lush cinematography. The story of the Ichthys is obscure enough to warrant multiple viewings to fully realize what is going on. It appears to be some commentary on life, death, and Christianity. Loom is a technical marvel that you should try to view if possible. Loom has some of most precise stop motion animation I’ve seen with excellent rendition of body language in the characters. The story in Loom communicates a singular idea regarding death in a powerful but intimate way with a creative implementation of symbolic elements running throughout the work.

    Another stop motion animation titled The Wraith of Cobble Hill won the festivals animation award but was screened on Wednesday. I wonder why it wasn’t in the Animation Extravaganza? I was able to catch it on Wednesday but think it would have been a nice addition to the animation venue. Adam Parish King, the creator of “Wraith” hails from Knoxville Tennessee which is not far from here and his film is being shown in festivals and seems to be winning awards.

    I was fortunate to have some discussions with Scott Kravitz, the creator of Loom, and other festival attendees that saw my film to get their thoughts about my work. I have decided to spend some time to forge an objective or vision statement to help clarify what I am attempting to do with my films. I have several ideas in my mind but have been unable to articulate them in a clear and cohesive manner. It seems that some people like the film but don’t know what it means, others just don’t like it, and a couple of people did like it and provided unsolicited statements that reflect what I was trying to do. I have drafted some notes since talking with people about the film and will probably revisit this topic later. In the meantime, if you are reading this and have seen the film, I welcome any thoughts you may have regarding what the film means to you, its strengths, its weaknesses, or any areas that are confusing.

    Other Film Festival News

    I saw Psychopathia Sexualis Friday night. It was made locally and had a form and presentation reminiscent of Peter Greenaway. The music was created by a local composer named Paul Mercer who did a fantastic job of providing an atmospheric score with hints of Arvo Part. I am really considering approaching him about music for my project. The film is going to be available on DVD from Kino.

    On Saturday night I attended the closing night ceremony which screened the little Death, awards were handed out, and free beer and food was provided afterwords. The little Death was very well done and had that independent film “feel” with great looking compositions, excellent performances, and a story that kept your attention. I wish the venue where it was showing had better acoustics and a projection system that didn’t blow out the whites which affected the overall experience. I chatted with the DP and he assured me that if you watched it on a DVD that it would look different and better that what was projected that night.

    Final Thoughts

    The festival was fun and I had pleasant conversations with various people in the animation and film making community. I’ve attended the festival before but it was a different experience having a film selected. I’ve submitted my film to a handful of other festivals and will wait to see if it has any more life in the festival circuit or if it’s ready for online or DVD distribution. In a way I am ready to put it to bed and focus on the current and future projects.