flying dead?

Today we worked on the human body as a puppet for animation. When we animate, we bring inanimate objects to life. When we animate a person, such as with the work of Wrik Mead, or in Neighbors by Norman McLaren, the subject seems less alive. In the video above we are riffing on the famous flying scene of McLaren's.

sorting photos

I was sorting photos and getting stuff printed for the album last week and reminded myself of this photo series that William and I made in Penticton this summer. It's based on the "flying" technique that McLaren did for "Neighbours" in 1962 but William actually suggested it without that reference so I finally got around to putting it together into a video. I posted it to Youtube, my first such posting all year.

I had a real vacation day today, I hung with William, watched Jonny Quest cartoons from 1964 (he loves them, as I hoped he would - they are adventure stories full of science and bits of magic and a great deal of suspending disbelief, akin to Tintin). I also sat for a few hours in front of my computer trying to work the footage Eric and I shot this summer to mimic some of Norman McLaren's optical printer films. Here are two new videos I posted: 1 + 2.

fast paced creativity

In the course of three hours I worked on, hmm, I think about 3 or four projects. First thing this morning (or about 10-10:30am) Eric and I shot footage in the studio to create homages to four different Norman McLaren films. I then set up the microphone for a recording with Elder Betty for the End of Life project and, while it was set up anyway, recorded an all new "Mr. Saul" soundtrack. After the recording with Elder Betty, I created and copied to transparencies, the title sequence for the 35mm ray-o-gram style film I've been making. All this while almost dizzy with exhaustion since William woke me up at 5 (I went to sleep at 1:30) and was dehydrated from the physical activity of the shoot (lots of physical movement).
Here is a silent first cut of a video we shot today in reference to McLaren's 1956 "Blur Test".

56

I'm trying to figure out YouTube today. I joined and I've uploaded a very short video (5 seconds) that I created in After Effects and Photoshop, using new brush designs to essentially stamp images onto a blank canvas to create work that has similar formal characteristics to that of Norman McLaren or Len Lye. I've called it something forgettable, but I think if you click here, it may take you there. Or perhaps here. It also features a random clip of my first recording with my Theremin (discussed previously). It's interesting to notice how blurry everything on YouTube gets with the compressions they use. Here is a still from my video, notice the (relative) sharpness of the screw on the left hand side of the frame under normal video resolution: