[ explorations in audio and moving imagery ]
Looks like some casual meetings took place on April 1, 2007 on both sides of the country. Here on the east coast, I was invited over to Takuro Masuda’s studio where he is filming his stop motion project for the Center for Puppetry Arts Experimental Puppetry Theater. His project involves Native American mythology and looks…
My new web address www.objectsatrest.com is now official. I was able to acquire the “dot com” version of the domain name. The former address www.objectsatrest.org should still work and redirect to the .com site but you may want to update any links or bookmarks that you may have. The former owner of the domain now…
There is a thread on stopmotionanimation.com about walk cycles. Here is a test that I did many months ago. I used the trial version of Stop Motion Pro and my web cam.
I had an interesting email exchange with J. Roche regarding non-linear editing using Sony Vegas and wrote down what I do when editing a film. My goal is to output DVD or HD-DVD resolution projects while also being able to edit that project using very small file sizes. The result is: improved performance of the…
I am in the process of relocating my studio over the next month or two. I plan to hold off on further filming of the Vitruvius project until I have the studio and lighting re-assembled. I have some compositing elements that I can work on in the mean time and I’m also exploring a new…
Last night (and still playing today) is “The Animation Show” curated by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt. I met up with Karl and also saw Brett at the event. Ward was there as well and I wouldn’t be surprised if he posts some info about the event in the near future on his blog or…
I needed to get some business cards to hand out at various times and decided to try the Flickr / Moo option. I have a Flickr site and read the specifications for sizing photos as Moo cards and made 10 card designs in Photoshop. I got the Moo 100 card pack for approximately $20 and…
My short film “The Sword of Damocles” is now showing along with several other stop motion films at the StopMoShorts.com web site. Here is a sketch of the character designs that I used when building my puppets. I plan to post more info about the making of my film later.
I recently attended a meeting of animators in the Atlanta area in a get together called “The Atlanta Animation Workshop“. As I recall there were more than 20 people in attendance and various works in progress, student works, and other animations were being screened. Members and guests come from all schools of animation so CGI,…
My second stopmotion film, “The Sword of Damocles”, is now complete. The date on my three page draft outline for Damocles reads November 25, 2006. I posted my intention of doing the Damocles project for StopMoShorts on November 28th (see previous post). It is now midnight December 19th and I have finished encoding the QuickTime…
…to work on my StopMoShorts.com entry for December. The three items are sword, fear, and cave. I’m stretching it a bit but hopefully it will work out. I’ll be spending every free hour shooting “Damocles” until the last week in December. The plan is to move quickly and ignore mistakes and imperfections which should make…
I just got the new Zigview S2 (model B) with video out which is intended to help with video assist. I tried it out tonight with my Serlio puppet and here are some photos, info, and some thoughts about the product so far. There is also a thread at the StopMotionAnimation.com forums with another Zigview…
I usually listen to music when animating. For the Vitruvius project I’ve been enjoying a mix of recent releases from bands such as Dungen, His Name is Alive, Simple Minds, Daniel Lanois and Wolf Parade. Speaking of Wolf Parade, I found the following music video of their song “Modern World” on YouTube. It looks to…
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…
View Quicktime MOV (approx 4MB) 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…
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…
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…
I went to the opening night event and got my filmmaker badge and the program. Tonight is a screening at the Center for Puppetry Arts called “Handmade Puppet Dreams” which I plan to attend unless it has sold out since I didn’t know about it until last night. Before the event there are tables out…
I sometimes paint on canvas with acrylics. The big easels at the art store always grab my attention but they can cost a large sum of money. Some time ago I stumbled across this web site with plans on how to build your own easel with 2×4’s. The advantage is that you can build an…
For my completed film, Man Drawing a Reclining Woman, I’ve made a DVD that is both NTSC and region free for my submission copy to send to film festivals. I’ve also registered with Withoutabox, which is a one-stop resource for describing your film and submitting it to many film festivals and paying registration fees. The…
This is the first post of the Objects at Rest animation studio blog. I recently completed my first short animation film titled “Man Drawing a Reclining Woman” which is based on a Durer woodcut and will be submitting it to film festivals. Currently I am in the development stages of my next project which is…