Little Bunny Foo Foo

A Few More Animations

My mentor gave me a list last week:


Jons and the Spider by  Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits and Soyoung Hyun. A good example of depth using layers of glass at a distance from each other.



Astigmatismo by Nicolai Troshinsky. Another very extreme example of focus layers.



"I" by Isabella Santos. Really nice, simple and effective idea. Done by a young student animator.



A trailer for "Gloria Victoria" by Theodore Ushev. Something a little more experimental and surreal.



Virtuos Virtuell, a film based on a musical composition by Louis Spohr. Interesting mix of techniques.

Official Videos for Antony and the Johnsons

Since I'm doing a music video for Antony and the Johnsons (which I may not be able to show for copyright reasons) it seemed logical that I should look at the official music videos for the band already in existence.  The official video for "Cut the World" (link) is definitely shocking. It's got a pretty interesting cast. Marina Abromovic, no less. She's been showing up in some interesting places. What the hell did I just watch?

His video for "Hope There's Someone" (link) was a bit more subtle. Subtle to the point that I stopped watching it and scanned ahead to see if anything happened. I was much more interested in the song than in the video.

"Crazy In Love" (link) was also subtle. The songs are the important part of both of these videos.

"Swanlights" is footage from a film, so it feels a little more like a trailer. It's gorgeous but completely mysterious. I have no idea what the story is but it's incredibly compelling.

"Swanlights" (link) directed and produced by Sara Hegarty. 

Footage from her upcoming film "The Last Hymn"

Featuring Sierra Paris. 

"Epilepsy is Dancing" (link) is an interesting portrayal of a seizure. As Antony said himself about the video: "Epilepsy is dancing is kind of like a waltz: a narrative that describes someone sort of losing control of their body and have a kind of transcendental experience then coming back to their body. It’s sort of like, how something can feel so out of control, in the moment, but when you look back it almost had a sort of choreography to it or you could make some sense of it or there's just some things you don’t understand why they happen."

It's a gorgeous video. It reminds me of a sexually charged modern dance version of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. It's fairly direct in it's reflection of the song, but completely effective and not at all obvious or expected. 

"The Spirit was Gone" (link) directed by Peter Sempel is interesting. It's a memorial to Kazuo Ohno (link) a Japanese Butoh dancer. I never thought about the Butoh dancers in connection with queer or transgender issues. It's always seemed like a feminist issue, where women were not allowed to be on stage so female characters were played by men.

The video for Future Feminism (link) isn't a music video, but it's a beautiful little lecture by Antony. It's very philosophical/political. "Unless we move into feminine systems of governments, we don't have a chance on this planet." 

It's interesting that the video I'm making has nothing to do with transgender issues, though the song might. It's Antony himself saying "I am bird girl." I'm not sure I need to change it but it is important to keep it in mind. The nice thing about painted animation is that the character could be anything. It's more about the feeling and I think that's universal. 

Survival Craft

Only about half my research time is spent looking at art or art related subjects. The other half is spent looking at everything else. I spend quite a bit of time on what I like to call "survival craft". This ranges from how to make viking turnshoes to the what, how and why of lacto-fermenting vegetables.  I spend quite a bit of time reading food, health and homesteading sites. I have a bug-out bag. I eat a Weston-Price diet when I can. I wear minimalist or "barefoot" shoes and have been doing so since before it was a "thing". It seems pertinent to have at least one post on these subjects, since everything in our psyche seeps into our art.

(14th century boots from http://www.medievaldesign.com/)

There are definitely going to be some eyes rolling by this point. I'm one of those paleo freaks. I'd probably do crossfit if I was more motivated. I wear those stupid looking toe shoes sometimes. 

But I should back up. This all has a history. 

When I was a kid, the best and most memorable time in my life was my 8th summer. Looking back on it, I think it's possible my family was technically homeless; I know things were financially difficult. But from my perspective it was 4 months of camping bliss. We had a homemade pit toilet, one of those solar heated black bag showers, a tiny trailer with a propane stove, tents, and a pickup truck. We spent most of the summer in the Jemez Falls campground in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. I think I might have worn shoes 10 times during the whole summer. I built up callouses that were 1/2 inch thick on the bottoms of my feet. Or that's how I remember it anyway.

So it's no wonder I hate supportive shoes. I feel like my feet are a symbol of who I am in some ways. They are big. They don't fit in to the common things that they are supposed to fit into. They want to be bare, free, themselves, not bound into some sense of false support that really weakens them. When they are wrapped up they overheat. Trying to restrain them causes actual physical pain. 

(Jemez Falls)

It goes back to being that kid alone in the woods, hiking for miles around, peering over the edges of the waterfall, putting yarrow on knee scrapes like my mother taught me, navigating by trail, tree, sun. It's no wonder, then as well that I feel a draw to homesteading and survival craft. It's not because I feel like the world is going to end, it's because I feel like I'm going to end. I feel thankful every day I wake up that I live in a nice house in Portland with a sweet boyfriend and our little dog, but I never feel at home and I don't think I ever will. 

I used to think about that camping trip every time I saw the cover of a Celestial Seasonings Roastaroma box. There's something nostalgic and evocative about this simple image, especially when combined with the smell and taste of the tea itself. 

Sadly, the image has been changed to something a little more dramatic. It's a good image for a tea box, but the nostalgia is gone. 

Neil Gaiman's Commencement Speech and Art Metatheory

There's a lot of bullshit in the art world. Anyone who has read Heidegger knows it. He had some really good points. He was saying some really beautiful poetic things. But I can't help look at what he writes with a sidelong look. I'm skeptical about theory.

I have a metatheory that there is a ton of good, useful art theory, and there is a lot of bullshit. There is a lot of art writing and thinking that is more akin to armchair psychology and sociology. An artist read a book by Jung and had some therapy and thus writes prolifically about the subconscious. I do that. It's OK to do that. Good, even. The subconscious is a popular subject in writing about art.

However, as artists in an academic institution we are expected to wear a bunch of different hats, interlope into worlds where people get PhD's to back up our theories. This is OK, but at the same time it doesn't make sense.

I found myself trying to use my layman's armchair knowledge of psychology, science, sociology, etc. to prop up the importance of my work and the concepts that I'm interested in working in. I found myself insecurely attempting to justify something that didn't need justification. Art isn't a science. It doesn't need to be one, nor do we need to prove to the world that it is "up there" with science and try to make it seem like the same thing, the same level of importance. It IS as important but in very different ways, and attempting to write the same way for art as we would for sociology is not going to prove anything.

My main theory of art: You are not a unique snowflake. If you like something, someone else will as well. You really are the expert on what good art is. If you can step away from yourself, you will know whether something is good or not. The thing is, when you DO step away from it, and if you are honest, you will see more flaws than anyone else. Just keep pushing until you make something that you are really really happy with. Something that you would buy if you had the money. Something that you absolutely love. My second theory: No matter how good it is, no matter how popular, no matter how successful you are, there will be people who hate it with a vehement passion, who are offended that you even had the gall to show it to anyone, much less make money or become successful from it. That's also ok. If you still love it, it's still good.
Some theory IS technical. Film theory, for instance, covers issues like narrative structure, timing, and aesthetics. Those are crucial to understanding why something works as a film and why it doesn't. We may understand on an intuitive level that a film sucks, but we won't really know what to do about it without that foundation. Some people figure this stuff out on their own, and make fantastic creative work without ever cracking a book. They learn by looking, by paying attention, by trying things and by really analyzing what it is in their own work that is working and not working.

Below is a commencement speech by Neil Gaiman for the class of 2012 at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. This is foundational art theory. The core of how and why to create in the first place.

In the future, as this term progresses, I'm going to revisit some things that I've read, watched and listened to that have to do with creative theory. To name a few:

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
The Poetry of Self Compassion by David Whyte
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

I'll be looking for quotes by creatives themselves, writing on creating, theory by those who know because they did the art and they were successful at it.

There is a philosophy is bandied about by many different creatives. Recently one of my favorite musicians Damien Jurado said it in his way. It is, to paraphrase, that we are merely vessels and that the creative work we do is just something we tap into as artists. Not only are we not the work, but we aren't even the creators of the work, merely the conduits for the Universe to speak. This is a completely "woo woo" concept, and has no place in an academic setting. Yet, I completely agree with it. Well, sometimes anyway.

Yes, I did just imply that artist's can hear the voice of god, and I'm not taking it back. Is this absurd? Yes, possibly. Is it any more absurd than the philosophy of Martin Heidegger? I don't think so. There's a perfectly good secular way of describing this that has to do with the subconscious mind processing information better than our analytical thinking mind.

Conceptual Contextualization, Tumblr/Blogger Sync,

(One of my goals this year, my last year of grad school, is to streamline my internet presence. I have been assigned to write 2 Tumblr posts a week for my practicum, so I'm going to start making a copy of the blogs I do on Tumblr and copy them into Blogger. That way I'll have everything in one place at some point. I prefer Blogger's format, ability to save posts and ability to embed video in blog posts anyway. It is a little complicated to make copies, but I think in the long run it will be worth it, if I ever get followers. Because of the vast amount of information I process every day, I need to start strategizing how I research, how I talk about it, how I organize it and how it relates to the work that I do. The practicum is organized into 4 parts: Tools, techniques and materials; precedents; art, craft and design theory; and related disciplines. )

I do a lot of research, in a loose sense of the word. To an artist everything is research. Looking out the window at the way the clouds move behind the trees is research. Looking at another person's art is research. I am also innately curious and almost obsessed with earth sciences and astronomy from a layperson's perspective. On top of that, I'm very interested in diet, exercise, the human body, health, natural medicine and "primal" eating and lifestyle.

(An example of how I aspire to eat. I nicknamed it the "Privileged American diet", because it's expensive and based on a society of plenty. But I'm a privileged American and my doctor told me to eat this way to get my blood sugar down. It's not my fault sugar and grain are the cheapest sources of calories.)

Out of necessity, I began to research the "barefoot running" fad after I discovered my feet don't hurt as much when I am barefoot, and I started making my own shoes because the fad is new enough that the shoes are all expensive and I can't find what I need. I am interested in homesteading skills like food preservation, gardening, survival skills and general DIY. I'm incredibly fascinated by dystopian fiction and the science, sociology, and cultural consciousness that inspire it. I think about ancient mythology and how it relates to our lives, how we as humans use archetypes, the kinds of stories that are told throughout human history and the similarities in the way the stories are told. My background, personality, personal history, and the environment I live in are all intrinsically tied to what I do and how. I probably spend about 10 hours a week absorbing information that I can definitively call research and cite. This ranges from watching science documentaries while I go to sleep (they help me sleep, that's probably worth it's own blog post) to listening to audiobooks while I work in the studio.

(Viking turnshoes and one of many tutorials on how to make them. ) 

I have several avenues of research that I'm looking at. First, the changes in the world around me on a global scale that inspire numerous fictional stories, debates, emotional responses, documentaries and scientific inquiries. Climate change, resource management, war, ecological destruction and cultural shifts all work together in a web of cause and effect. Second, storytelling itself as a powerful medium of looking at what is happening in the world and translating it into something relatable, using archetypes, myth-telling, folklore, etc. Third, the way I tell these stories using my artistic abilities: All kinds of storytelling will be explored in my research, but they will likely converge as some kind of hands on, physical medium like paint or puppets that are animated in some way. Fourth, I'm interested in music videos and similar kinds of abstracted filmic storytelling connected to the poetic medium of music. I'm interested in how to translate a song into a short film and the precedents of doing so. My final project will either be an animated short film, an animated webcomic, an installation including animation, or an animated music video. I'm open to performative methods of storytelling as well. All my animations will be created using at least mostly physical, handmade techniques such as stop motion puppet animation, paint or paper. If I find a band, my theme will depend entirely on the song and the desires of the band.

(earth 2100, a sensationalist ABC documentary about a worst case scenario of what could happen to our world if we don't make some changes as a species. Includes badly flash animated but aesthetically pleasing fictional story to illustrate the points they make. I found it incredibly compelling even though it was clearly sensational and over the top.) 

Most of the research I do, I would do whether I was in school or not, but I'm approaching it differently now. I'll be analyzing what I look at in a cultural as well as personal context, I'll be organizing my research into categories, and of course I'll be keeping a bibliography and keeping track of who, what, when, where, why and how of what I research. My categories will include general animation; storytelling and artistic techniques; music video; film theory; mythology; dystopian, apocalyptic, utopian and futuristic fiction and nonfiction; and personal context. I will also be looking at the psychology, philosophy and sociology behind these things, if possible.

(After the End: Representations of Post Apocalypse by James Berger. I haven't started reading it yet.) 

As an artist in an academic institution, I have to do this kind of research,. However it is really important to keep in mind that I'm not a sociologist, a scientist, a psychologist, a philosopher or an anthropologist, even though I will be doing research in all of these fields. People get PhD's in each those fields. It would be impossible to uphold the standards of each one of them. It's not my responsibility to keep track of the peer reviewed proof behind them, do statistical analyses, do my own real scientific research, etc. I'm merely translating what I experience into something poetic and learning how to talk about it. I'm learning what makes me tick and what makes my audience tick. I'm learning who my audience is and what it is I want to share with them.

Throughout my blog, I embed links within the text for context (they look like this). It is the reader's responsibility to click on them, because I use them in lieu of a description. I'm already writing twice as many words as I'm required to, if not more. I will also try to cite the most important sources in formal bibliographic form at the bottom of my posts from now on.

Mostly, I need to remember the reason behind the impetus to study art and design in the first place. To take such a risk as to go deeply in debt to study a subject that has no economic security in an economic downturn, I have to have a really strong reason. These reasons are not rational at all, and though I will attempt to make my research rational, the work I do will not be based on logic or rationality. As many artists, I have an intense drive to create. So intense, I'm willing to risk my own financial security despite knowing what financial insecurity looks like. I grew up with nothing. I've been hungry and homeless, I've struggled through low wage jobs, family dysfunction and illness all at the same time. I've been through hell, and I know that my current life is not guaranteed. I'm risking the possibility of falling back into that desperate world, of working low wage office jobs to get by just so I can get better at my art. It's a huge risk, and I've known it all my life. But the impetus to do this is so intense, I feel that I have no choice. It is what gives my life meaning, without which there is no point.

Therefore, what I do as an artist HAS to be authentic, otherwise I'm doing this all for nothing. Why go through all of this only to do something that I don't believe in? Why risk everything only to lose sight of why I'm doing this in the first place? I'm doing art so that I can make use of these things I'm compelled to do on an intuitive level. I was raised to trust my instincts, and when I don't, I've always regretted it. So the inspiration for all my artwork, whether I'm working for a client or not, will be guided by this instinct. It's not conceptual thought that I work from, it's gut feeling, because gut feeling is what I'm trying to process and portray. I can ask myself why I have an instinct, use it as a point of inquiry, follow it until it no longer serves it's purpose and find another path, but I have to follow the original intuition to get there.

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.