Objects At Rest

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.

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

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.