New Animation: Beaver Love. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Beaver Love from Angie Pickman on Vimeo.
Working Zoetrope Prototype
A zoetrope is a traditional animation device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures (wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope). I’ve been working on this for awhile, trying to figure out what hardware to use to put it together, what would make it spin most easily.. I went through many purchases and almost as many returns before settling on a cardboard hat box on top of a plastic lazy susan. I spray painted both black, and modified a print of my paper cutting “Winter’s Reason” to become the images inside.
The Longest Night – New Cut Paper Animation
This is my nod to the winter solstice. I just wrapped it up this morning after a long night of not being sure where to go with it. Sure enough, though, sleep gave my mind a rest, I woke up, spit out the words to go along with the action I already had filmed, made a little musical ditty, and there you have it. Hope you enjoy!
Animation in Progress
I spent a good portion of the day working on my newest animation.. It’s a little abstract. I spent about 7 hours shooting an 11 second segment (goes to show how long it takes to do stop-motion, even with my sped up rough style). I’m shooting 2 frames at a time at a rate of 24 frames per second, which means that for each second of finished animation, there are 24 shots (but I’m doubling them up, so you get 2 duplicate shots right in a row — half the amount of work and good enough for this style).
I’ve never shot away from a light box before, so this portion of the animation is a new technique for me, having to use lighting from the sides and above (instead of below to create silhouettes). I’m no lighting expert and you definitely see the flicker, but all in all, I actually prefer to have the look of the early 1900’s films, so I’m a-ok with it. I suspect I won’t finish it this week since I also have lots of art fair prep to do, and next week you’ll find me on a sunny (hopefully) shore in Florida for a quick break from life, then Thanksgiving, then the Bizarre Bazaar in Lawrence, and then I’ll be back at it.
Shadow Puppet
I couldn’t wait. I’ve already started working on a new short animation. I’ve got it all planned out. Next up is creating the scenery. It’s gonna be pretty basic (like my others), but I’m going to try out some new techniques that I haven’t used before. I’m using this to also get a feel out of the editing software I bought almost a year ago and haven’t utilized yet…
Today was strangely productive in the most domestic of ways. I made candied apples (just like my grandma always used to make with Red Hots candy), chocolate & cocoa covered almonds, and a big pot of soup with kale, some random vegetables, fresh herbs, quinoa and chia seeds. I’ve never made soup like that before. It turned out great.. And of course, I made this puppet. All this creative energy was perhaps fueled by three chai lattes. Moderation in moderation.
Random Things/ Inspirations/ New Toys
From one of my walks last weekend.
Current obsession: the medley on side B of The Beatles’ Abbey Road.
Animation Stuff
I had this goal to do a bunch of animations this year, and I’ve been going full tilt at everything else that contributes to my livelihood.. not that thats a bad thing. But I love animation and the moving image (old school types), and I’m eager to get my hands back on my animation gear to make some new things over the winter months. I just ordered a praxinoscope — hoping to use some of these in my upcoming exhibit in Omaha. They’re an early animation device that I’ll never be good at describing, so read more about there on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxinoscope. Below is a video of the same model that I purchased. I should have it next week and I’ll post some experiments here.
Animation: John Lennon’s “Oh! Yoko!” by Keiichi Tanaami
Apogee Mic + Visual Soundscapes
I’ve got my mind stuck on an animation idea.. Nothing concrete – but I’ve got some abstract visual ideas that I want to tie in with some sort of ethereal soundscape.. I want the sound to set the scene more than the visuals, with the visuals supporting it. I don’t even know how or if that makes sense or if I will ever make it happen with time winding down to art fair season. My mind always goes back to the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine movie. So good. I want to make that. But with my own sounds and visuals and ideas. I love the flow, the abstractness, the whimsical qualities.
Anyway, I’ve been playing around with my new Apogee Mic. It’s really simple – it plugs right into the usb port on the computer and works seamlessly with Garageband. I’m obviously not trying to make a platinum record here, but I’m trying to get it to sound good. So far it’s been… ok. I don’t really know anything about recording/ mic placement/ acoustics except for the basics. So to hide the badness, I resort to heavy processing and effects in post production (mixing? I dunno what you call it). I’ll admit that I actually like those effects that make it all sound a little more psychedelic or ethereal or what have you. I used to rock out on a synthesizer and try to make it sound like I was in outer space. I’m pretty sure I blew out my brother’s guitar amp after plugging the synth into it. There was a loud explosive noise and I ran. (I’m for the first time admitting that it was me that did that.. after 25 years. But I don’t think he reads this..)
Here’s a short little thing that I did this morning using my adaptation of Mark Fry’s “Song for Wild” that I posted yesterday. The Mic does pretty well recording voice with little effort getting the mic placement and gain correct. I still can’t seem to get it to record the ukulele without having some sort of strange sound after each note — I call it crud. Maybe its disturbance? I’ve tried to play close to the mic, far from the mic, and everywhere in between. I’ve tried the gain volume at every level that makes sense.. My playing isn’t great either so it’s picking up all the flaws too, but there’s still a noise — sort of a buzz — that I can’t figure out how to get rid of. Plus, it still obviously sounds like an amateur bedroom recording. There’s an answer and I’m determined to find it. Anyway, I recorded three voice tracks and three ukulele tracks. I’m now my own band that can’t play together.. Totally nerding out and having fun.
Behind the scenes of “A Poem” animation
I’ve got my little ‘production studio’ set up in a little alcove in my lovely wood paneled bedroom. My equipment included an iMac running Dragonframe (for stop-motion capture) & Garageband, an 18 x 24 inch light box, a Canon EOS 60D, a 42″ rostrum with an 18″ x 24″ base, and my ukulele.. I shot the entire animation in one take — I did all the scene transitions directly on the light box and didn’t have to edit anything together except for the fade in and fade out to credits added in post production. I ended up shooting 24 fps which means that for every second of animation, I moved the element 24 times capturing each movement with my camera in 24 shots. I think I ended up with about 760 shots total. And it actually ran a little faster than I had desired so I slowed it down a bit in post-production. I had hoped to dive into Adobe After Effects & Premiere for editing and it was just way beyond me for the amount of time I wanted to spend in post-production, so I brought the raw video into iMovie which is fairly straight forward and simple and put the final touches there.
As far as sound, I came up with this little chord pattern the morning I made it and actually recorded the music before the animation as I wanted the animation to follow a beat similar to a heartbeat which I tried to emulate in the tempo of the recording. As I mentioned in a previous post, for recording the ukulele, my software driver for my little mixing board was out of date so that was out of the question.. and I hit up radio shack for some adapters to try to plug my microphone into an iMic (basically a small amplifier with phantom power to power the mic) to run it into my computer for recording, but I got an awful buzz and almost no recording volume, presumably from the iMic not giving enough juice to the microphone.. so I ended up recording a test run straight through the computer mic and processing it with some effects in Garageband so that it wouldn’t sound so awful. Too lazy (and tired.. it was like 13 hours into the process) to re-record a final version, I just used the test run in the final video.. And I just ordered the Apogee MiC USB microphone for Macs after reading lots of good reviews and against the advice of some sound friends who whole-heartedly believe in mixers. But I’m not trying to record a platinum record, so the simpler the better, as long as it sounds decent.
The elements were all hand cut (except for my hand which was live obviously..). The bird gained movement by having a hinged head (you can’t see it in the pic but the head can move up and down) and various wing and feet positions. For each shot, I’d rotate them out to give it movement.
As far as the overall idea, I woke up in the middle of the night a few days before making it after having a dream about something, and this image of a bird flying out of a breaking heart popped into my head.. and I grabbed my iPhone and started jotting down words and the poem came to be in this final version within about two hours, and then I fell back asleep..
All in all, it was short and sweet and really exciting to make. Can’t wait to dig my heels into the next one..