beached

This is something I just threw together! I have always loved animation. When I was a kid I drew flipbooks on those 3x5 index cards. If I can find them, if I still have them, I'll film those too. I just finished watching some video clips over at Chris Sickel's Red Nose Studio. He's amazing! Saw his work on the cover of...Prospect magazine a few weeks ago, I'm pretty sure. And I carved a fish skeleton yesterday with my new Speedball carving tool set (schweeeeet!) and thought, huh. Why don't I make my own flipbook animation? (still have not learned Flash or how to mash up photos in Photoshop to make a GIF or an animation short. yet.)

So here is the result, it's a bit fuzzy, maybe I'll do it again. It's supposed to be flopping around, like all dead-skeletons-of-fish do.....Soundtrack courtesy Chemical Brothers, album Surrender, track Orange Crush:



(click on the lower left play button to stay in this browser window, or you can double click on the play screen and go straight to YouTube)

take two -- three??

more deco mania, but this time, I figured out the focus thing a bit better. And, the stuff I used to cover the little deco with is actually construction paper, not cardstock like I said. The cardstock paper is what I used in the middle. Again, I figure people can use their own paper and affix their pictures to the pages, which is what I usually do....



What I am trying to clarify below is that the material I used to make the actual deco is cardboard, corrugated cardboard. It's a bit more stiff than your standard cardboard box corrugated cardboard, though. I filched it from the garbage bin at work, there are lots of them hanging around so they must come in something library-ish that gets delivered to us.



And finally, at least for now, if you have trouble viewing videos here, you can double click on the video window and it should take you directly to YouTube's page where the video is hosted.

Alternatively, you can click HERE to go to my YouTube page and view all of the videos from there.

I need a shower.

studio outtakes

Just got back from a nice bike ride - and I was only out in the rain for the last, oh, eight minutes of it! Sweet! Got home and opened the mail while I stretched. The kitchen cabinets are a good place to stretch my calves - I guess that's a hard thing to picture. But I was looking around at the art and stuff I left lying around before my bike ride (admittedly, a hasty departure because the rain had stopped) and thought it'd be a good thing to record. Over at LMAO we have an album for pictures of our studios...well this is the other half of mine. I just make do with whatever space is available and this morning it was the south side of the kitchen, where I am doing things with crayons.

First I tried drawing on various sorts of paper, and then putting another piece of paper on top, and then ironing it. Not very spectacular results. Very disappointing. Then I tried laying wax paper over the drawings...still nothing, really. Then I tried a piece of lined paper, folded in half with the drawing in - that's better! Getting that parchment/stained glass effect now! Then I just put a piece of paper right on the darn iron and started drawing stuff - presto!

and THEN I just warmed up my cast iron skillet and put a piece of paper inside and drew on that! Brilliant!

Who needs a plate warmer?



Here's a closer-up photo of the melty crayon drawing.

deco 101

For the fine folks over at LMAO. Well and for anyone else of course...

I guess I should have used the macro lens for close-ups, it's a bit fuzzy...maybe even moreso now that I've done the up and download thing. For some reason, it always looks better right on my destop.

For this deco I am using some cardboard for the covers, I fished it out of the garbage bin at work. I covered it using black construction paper, with blue on the inside. The front cover features a hand-carved stamp image that I actually did prints of, after doing a large monoprint with all those other colors and cutting it up for multiple printed images. The inside pages are made from cardstock I bought at a local store for five bucks a ream. It's okay to work on with crayon or colored pencil, but I have seen so many people (and usually do this myself) just create their own image on a separate piece of paper and then affix it to an existing page, I'm not too worried about the quality of paper in this particular deco. The pages are sewn inside, with a regular sewing needle and some nylon thread. Et voila!



Now this deco is made with laminate - the kind of stuff used for countertops. My friend Jacque works in a woodshop and she cut up a bunch of it for me. I am all about scrounging and re-using materials and leftovers whenever at all possible. All I am doing here (it's a work in progress as you see) is gluing mulberry paper to the laminate. Just to see what happens. I am using ModPodge to do it. It's pretty sturdy, especially when that glue dries clear and flexible. I'll sew the pages in the same way I did the small deco (above - it is ATC-sized). This deco measures...5"x5" or 13cm each way.

I am real new to all this and use inexpensive, easily obtained materials. There's a great site on how to make your own journal this-a-way.

Have fun!!

hush

Late last night, and I don't know where the inspiration came from. Out of the blue, as they say. It's not fancy but what it lacks in technical wow makes up in atmosphere, at least for me. It was raining last night too, I really wanted to capture that sound, but the mic on the camera wasn't that strong, even though the bathroom window was wide open. Yes, folks, this is my bathroom. You can just about see the card I received, propped against the wall. It's a crow and I received it from Ang over on Nervousness, in a postcard swap. It's beautiful and the colors in my bathroom all play with each other, now with this beautiful card to add to the mix.

I wish so much that I could film the view from inside the bathroom, looking at the frosted window at night. When the neighbor across the courtyard turns the porchlight on, shadows of bamboo are thrown up 'like patterns of nerves against a screen' - to loosely paraphrase ts eliot in Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock. That's what I always think of when I see it, a saintly dance, it's breathtaking. Everything is dark except for that illuminated spot through the window, which is further refracted into patterns because of the window-glass.

on the way home

As promised....







**edited Tuesday May 23 - I've learned that a friend's mother passed away yesterday...a fare thee well to her and warm thoughts to you my friend....I realized that yesterday while I was going to the river to take pictures and videos for you that you were most likely sharing your final moments with you mother, unbeknownst to me. Serendipity knows no bounds and connects us all!!**

post storm

A ride down the bike path we've been down a few days ago...this time, after the hailstorm and mighty wind going on yesterday (also digitally documented for progeny).

Also my homage to Kurosawa, filming into the sun.



Second half of this side of the bike path, where I hop off to go running at a giant (friendly) weed. The thing is ginormous, and every year along this stretch, they reach upwards on thick stalks. Amazingly, most of them survived the hail battering.



Here is a busy bee.



And here is the other side of the bridge, and more tree litter. Usually the path is quite clean, free of debris. But, as you see here, the wind and hail had its way of it yesterday.

Here's a couple photos too, including some more Seussian scepter flower things I saw on the ride home:

oh, okay. Blogger's not uploading pictures right now, so there's a nice little cliffhanger for you...tune in again soon...and thanks for watching!

stormy weather

Long about a quarter to seven this evening, the sky got even darker (after puffy white clouds in a blue sky a couple hours earlier) and a right proper storm moved in!



Usually our rains are steady, sometimes windy, but not very often to we get this sort of thing:



And a view from the front:

Just Ducky

I'm trying a new video server, YouTube. The other night I was walking homewards through the park and the new duckies deserved a few frames, I thought. They were paddling around very efficiently, snapping up gnats and mosquitos in their bills. Sweeeet!

down the lane

Visited my pal Clark this afternoon, rode my bike into town and then on the way back I hauled out my digicam for a little ride-along home movie. Such as it is. I love the bike paths around here and there are a LOT of them, paralleling the Willamette River on both sides for miles and miles. It's a real bike-friendly town. Well, Eugene is...here is Springfield, there aren't as many bike lanes, but there are still.

RAGA

Another installment...I wanted a prism for this, I didn't want to untie the triangular one hanging from the front room window (that was my mother's, and she gave it to me before she died...oh wow, Happy Mother's Day). I said aloud, "I need a prism!" and then my eyes rested on a bauble that was given to me by a boy I once knew. A glass globe with a dragon etched around its circumfrence, standing on a cube. A prism. I set the whole thing spinning for this.

Soundtrack courtesy Asana, track Devabandha

colloidoscopic

fun...rough, but fun.

Now it's actually Sunday, next day, and I'm editing the post because I did another take, this time 30fps instead of 15, trying to work out some of the grain...but then the microphone was popping. Low-hi-tech, I tellya. Gotta love it though.

*soundtrack courtesy Systemwide off of their album Sirius, track 2 Nommos

Birthday from Pluto

A great big Bjork-inspired (and admittedly, cheap beer-drinkers...of which there are a surprising many throwing away perfectly good cash it in for five cents bottles)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

to my friend Annie in New York, who I met through ATCards. She's an amazing artist, you can see her beauties over this-a-way.

Hope you have a fabbity fab day Annie!

*soundtrack courtesy Bjork, album Homogenic, track Pluto

two for the road

I love when it's sunny because then the water's reflection under the bridge is visible, and it's one of my very favorite things. This is along the canal, and the bike path parallels it and goes under this bridge. We have a lot of bike paths and bridges here. It's awesome.



More reflections - this from an ornamental hanging up thing in the neighbor's back porch. In the afternoon, again in the sunny months which are now beginning in earnest, the light reflects off the disc-shapes and onto the wall of the laundry room. I guess the neighborhood communal cats have got bored with it, but if I was a cat, I'd be chasing those little lights all day and be one happy feline oh yeah.