It’s been a busy day of printing greeting cards, working on commissioned designs, emails, delivering new stock to galleries downtown, maneuvering my car out of my icy driveway (4 wheel drive saves the day), etc. All business.
I woke up to this snowy scene Tuesday morning.. I’ve been enjoying the snow days, but I think I’m starting to feel ready for spring. Definitely ready to get back out on the running trail (gotta prep for the Kansas City to Lawrence Brew 2 Brew Run coming up in April — a 44 mile relay race between Boulevard and Free State Breweries. I’m on a team with 9 other people. It’ll surely be a doozy..)
I’ll be doing some ‘live’ paper cutting at this Friday’s Monster Drawing Rally that kicks off Kansas City Design Week 2013 and benefits the Women in Design-Kansas City Scholarship Fund. All works will be available through a silent auction. Come hang out, enjoy happy hour, and watch some art makin’! Check this link for more details: http://www.facebook.com/events/121228168056838/
Today I’m finishing up the cover for the spring edition of The Lantern literary journal, and I also started sketching for the cover art for new CD & LP from band Maria The Mexican.
I also have been invited to have a solo exhibit at the Michael Phipps Gallery inside the main branch of the Omaha Public Library in Omaha, NE. I’m hammering out the details on that and I’ll post more info soon.
Putting a spring theme to it as I wait out the next round of blizzard headed this way.. I kind of like being snowed in. Except I dug out yesterday to restock Phoenix Gallery and hit up the record store. Needed some new (well, used actually) records to stay warm. Til next time..
A feather (before edits) from a recent illustration job about a Delaware tribe Native American folk tale.
“I live in my dreams — that’s what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That’s the difference.” -Hermann Hesse, Demian
(I just finished reading Hesse’s “Demian” last week — adding it to my list of favorite books of all time. It was pretty amazing.)
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..
I designed & cut this for their website & other promo items. I’ll post links shortly.