Temporalis: Time Passes. Paint on Glass and Animation Installation

Many years ago, I was introduced to William Kentridge and his gorgeous animated drawings. I began to wonder what would happen if paint was used instead of charcoal. It took me almost a decade to try it and find out for myself. I did some research and had some recommendations by teachers. Among others, I discovered Alexander Petrov, Caroline Leaf and my personal favorite, Carine Khalife.

Although not exclusively, paint on glass is commonly done on a light box, which means that the colors act differently than usual painting. The light shines through the paint from behind, so the value is controlled by opacity and thickness rather than adding white. I began by using oil paint, since that is where my experience lies. Oil paint does dry comparatively quickly using this method, even though I mixed it with petroleum jelly to slow the drying process and thinned the paint with vegetable oil. The drawback is that I only have a day or two to work on something, and once it dries, I can't work on it anymore. However oil has certain properties that acrylic and watercolor do not. Also, once the image is dry I can frame and potentially sell the final frame of each scene as a physical painting. Here are a couple quick experiments:

During the summer, I took a class called "Boundary Crossings: Cyber Folklore", an animated arts installation class through PNCA. Oil paint was not an option, as I was using the expensive equipment in the animation lab, so I decided to try watercolor. Watercolor has a few benefits using this method. The dry parts can be drawn into with water and repainted. Also, if glycerin is mixed into the paint it hardly dries at all, though the glycerin greatly affects the texture of the paint and makes it harder to control.

I also used this project as a way to explore something I think a lot about: Disaster, war, climate change and societal collapse. I was thinking about how we take for granted the world that we experience and how things may change at any time. I was riding my bike to class every morning through the lovely idyllic Portland, Oregon on beautiful summer days, and I thought about how one day, all of what I was seeing and experiencing may be gone, and what replaces it may not be so idyllic. I used Google Street View to capture 3 iconic views of portland, and then painted them as though they had been bombed. I used only a few colors so that the series of 3 animations would relate to each other.

To make this animation, I hinged two pieces of glass and attached them to a light box which was taped and wedged down under the camera so that it wouldn't move. The dusty wind was created by brushing a layer of wet paint a keyframe at a time across the back of the top piece of glass. The sky was painted on the back of the bottom piece of glass, the scenery on the front of that, and the movement on the front of the top piece. This created depth and layering and allowed me to move parts of the image without touching other parts.

 I failed to keep it still on the first one I did, which is why the Burnside Bridge scene appears to wiggle. I decided it looked like a camera blowing in the wind, which inspired an idea I didn't follow through on which was to install video monitors and create a bunker for my installation, equipped with video monitors and the sound of radio, a running generator, wind and one lonely voice crackling in on a radio scanner. The idea was good, but so much of the beauty of the painting was lost on a monitor, so I opted for stripping down the concept to a minimal and poetic approach and back projected the animations on to strips of vellum hung with invisible thread, removed all the props, and put the sound on large auditorium speakers for a full range which were placed behind the viewer and echoed through the storage closet. I can't deny that there was a touch of black humor in the project, painting the iconic "Portland, Oregon" sign fallen among the rubble was as much tongue in cheek as it was serious.

I plan to continue this animation process, perhaps in conjunction with my continued learning process with stop motion and claymation. I also plan to continue the theme of societal collapse and disaster. This theme is a contemporary mythology that echoes cultures across the globe and through time. Everyone on the planet is descended from the 3000-10,000 individual humans that survived the Toba super volcano eruption that happened about 75,000 years ago. Perhaps the memory of that worldwide catastrophe has been imprinted on us. Apocalypse is in our genes.

Homage to the Ball-Point Pen

Ah, the ball point pen. So cheap, advertisers find the advertising worth more than the pen, so many of my drawings have been done with a freebie. How many drawings have I done with a white plastic bic, emblazoned with the blue text of a bank or hotel? Many. There are so many things I could say about the simple, humble ball point pen. I prefer it to an art pen, because I can control the value of the mark and because it is cheaper. I love the feel of a simple ball point writing on the most basic sketch or printer paper. I like the smell of the ink. Accidentally, I've even tasted ball point pen ink. So intensely have I looked at a ball point and it's ink, taken them apart, studied the blobs coming out of the little interior straw that holds the ink, I can tell you the black ink is actually a very dark red or occasionally a dark purple or blue. I prefer the ball point to pencil as well, because with pencil I know I can correct my mark, so I'm less free, I think too much, I get intense, I make too dark a mark. It's a leap of faith. Life is like drawing in ball point pen: You can control the value, but you can't erase.

I would like to spend an artist residency with nothing available to me but simple sketch paper and as box of black bic pens. The cheap, simple ones, not the darker, smoother ones that are more expensive.

If I were to go back over the entire arc of my art career, even back to my childhood, I would find drawings in pen or pencil of characters. I've been doing character sketches since I was 12, maybe earlier, but only lately decided to recognize that they were character sketches. The following is scarcely 5 of the most recent character sketches selected from my sketchbook. I added them to my website and will continue to add them as I find some of the old ones and create new ones.

Recently I decided to start filling my sketchbook using the medium I love to make the drawings I love. It's so fast and relaxing that I hardly consider it a distraction from the rest of my work. It can be a relaxing and productive replacement for decompressing on a video game or Facebook. At best, the drawings may be preliminary sketches for future puppets and animations. Or become comics or animations themselves. I'd like to do an entire graphic novel in ball point some day. No pencil pre-drawing. Just a leap of faith.

Here are the best of the last week of drawings. As I find dig out more or draw more I'll add them. Hope you like them!

Little test animation

Ok so this video is pretty jumpy. It's a test sketch of a new puppet I manufactured over the last couple weeks for school. It's also a little faded looking due to the experiment with a makeshift fabric "filter" I put over the camera, which I think may have an application for the other stuff I want to do.

I'm intending to animate the puppet coming out of a chrysalis. Kind of a predictable video perhaps, but I'm new at this and it's an easy set. the best thing I can do is make something simple the best I can, so I understand the nuance. Later I can do something more complicated.

The set was too small so I zoomed in too close to see the wings in all their glory, and the puppet is honestly too big, so the process of animating her takes some awkward support systems (I bought a microphone boom just for that purpose, and you can actually see the little thread on her left wing.)

All in all it was a great and informative test but as a video itself it's not much of a product... more part of the process!

I loved working with "breathing cycles" which I don't see much in 3 dimensional stop motion, but it's pretty much standard in 2-d analog animating.

2 New Animation Tests

So, I've been sick recently. Probably the flu. The kind of sick where you stay in bed for a week, only dragging yourself up for the barest necessities. Unfortunately, I was sick when I had final projects to work on. I missed a couple really important classes, fell short on a project I all but abandoned, and didn't get into the studio at all. What I did do, however, was make a short 2 dimensional animation using a graphic tablet and GIMP. It's very short. I use iMovie to add sound to my animations, and I've found that it lowers the quality of the images, so I need something else to use. But this is a test, so I'm ok with it.

I did it from my bed on my laptop in short spurts of energy before I got delerious and went back to sleep.

Today, I did another little animation, now that I'm feeling better. It's my first time lapse video and the first animation I did with my new Canon Rebel connected to an intervalometer. It's not impressive but it's kinda cool. I decided to let myself be in the picture, because the outdoor long term project I want to do, I will be in the picture. Kind of like a puppeteer, only in an animation. I hope that while the puppet will move smoothly, I will pop in and out and jerk around. Maybe I'll be in black so I'm more of a shadow. That would be kind of cool. Anyway here it is. Enjoy!

5 Day Animation Challenge

I'm posting this a week later than I expected. I did it. I did a whole... or most of... an animation in 5 days. It was suggested that I do a couple more 5 day animation challenges. The sound was much longer than the animation, and I had to loop sections to make it fit the music and it was pretty much a failure. Oh well.

Here is the short, soundless version. It's a sketch, and an experiment. I don't expect to win any film awards for this. But I think it's got some cool stuff going on.

Next, I'm going to play with some armatures that are not wire, make something bigger, possibly with natural materials, and use a found setting instead of building a set. I have some interesting ideas to play with. I'll post them when they are done! It was suggested by my mentor that I do a couple more 5 day animation challenges, and I agree that it would be more productive than going back and finishing this one

Animation Adventure Begins!

This is my first attempt ever at animation. The paper figures took about 10 minutes each to make. It's just a test, to work out how this animation thing works!

I decided to make another very fast, thrown together animation of about a minute or less. I gave myself a deadline of about a week. I know that deadline is insane for animating, and I like that it's insane, but the above 3 second animation took me about an hour to make and half of that was learning the software, so I think I can do it. It's like the animation version of gesture sketching. When you have a very short amount of time to finish something, you really hone in on what is important. Here is a sneak preview of the storyboard and sound:

This little animation is the first part of a longer story. The story has elements from mythology, like the ferryman that takes the dead across the river styx. The girl will have archetypal elements of Persephone and Orpheus, and the story will be somewhat inspired by the ancient myth of Ishtar's descent into the underworld. This scene might not make the cut, as it's a little unoriginal.  

P.S.: sounddogs.com is awesome, and where I found all the sound and music for this piece. Next time I'd like to use at least some of my own sound. 

Figures In The Dark

Puppets, or dolls, soft sculpture, call them what you like, posed and photographed in the dark at night in a slightly eerie and possibly somewhat dangerous part of town. I haven't settled on how to make the puppets yet. Long exposure and the simulation in digital form of 1600 speed film lend a raw, grainy, mysterious texture. I'm not afraid to use photoshop for effects.

In person the figures are somewhat barbie and ken doll like, which has prompted me to continue to explore the possibilities of how to make them. Questions that haven't been answered yet are: Keep to 12" or go up to twice that, or even make them tiny? Realistic or not? Wire armatures or marionette style with strings and a scaffolding? Face or faceless? Should I worry about how they are in person? Should I make sets or props or only use what's in the world? What would happen if they were life sized? (That sounds like a huge job, but it's not as hard as you think. Sometimes smaller things are harder to make because the details get too small to work with.) And since when was I ever afraid of things taking a long time?

Oh, and I'm a few months into my graduate school experience. It's a pretty awesome and unique program. http://acd.pnca.edu