Hear, Hear! and here is a movie made with Post -it Notes!

My good friend Tom White, who graduated from MIT's infamous Media Lab, sent me this link.
I had talked to Emily and Joey about getting us all together for a night of shooting and editing some frames (plus food and drink!), and this is inspiring for what I want to accomplish that night, although I was thinking of using Legos as the actors. I would like to make a simple stop motion teaching pixel resolution, and this seems to show me the way, maybe you'll see what I saw in this short film.

Check it out!

stop-motion variant

I love how many different ways there are to tell stories! This is a great example of a truly creative method, I understand that there were more than 700 scenes knitted for this piece.

Hi everyone! So sometimes I cruise the interwebs, watching for interesting or innovative animations, seeking inspirations and ideas. I recently encountered an artist named Stefan Nadelman, whose webpage is located at http://www.touristpictures.com/ . This guy is really inspired, and uses many different techniques as part of his storytelling process. In particular, I saw that in some of his short films, he utilizes actual photographs or real footage of real world places as backgrounds, sometimes even as the principle characters. I am inclined to think that we may benefit from this kind of technique as well, meaning that we could use actual photos or film of real places in Denver as the settings for our animated characters. Using some simple methods, we could apply these images as "skins" for three-dimensional shapes created in 3D Studio Max or some other whiz-bang program. I believe this could be a time-saving process, decreasing the amount of time needed to physically build environments, as well as adding a level of "verisimilitude" or suspension of disbelief to the entire feature. I encourage you to take a look at Nadelman's works to get a better idea of what I mean, as well as to simply enjoy this guy's creative process.

Miniature in CG: A Possible Direction

Hey Randy! You snooze you lose! I'm posting your email before you can blog it again:


"Hiya Wes, I'm sure I'll see you tomorrow for your tour of my studio, but I just came across a video that made me think of something, and I wanted to see what you thought. There's this guy that does some really innovative animation, name's Stefan Nadelman. He's got some really good stuff. BUT, this link that I'm including uses a sort of composite animation style, using actual photographs as the environments for his animated characters. So, my question is about how easy it is to use this method versus going through the process of building elaborate sets for the stop motion we're planning. We'd still have to use the Forum for the primary character animations, but we might be able to save some time by compositing our characters on top of photos or footage, adding more "realism" to the whole endeavor. What do you think? I don't know how you feel about having to do so much work in computer to finish our piece, but do you think it might be easier or faster? Just throwing this one out there for us all to consider."

Randy's Tour of Cooper & Cunningham

The animation crew of The Pebble Casserole had the distinct pleasure of visiting the Cooper & Cunningham studio tonight as a guest of Randy Buckle, the studio's manager.

The studio space is part of a warehouse complex north of Sheridan, (also home to a slaughterhouse, limo rental, HVAC) and from the outside you would never guess what beings are brought to life inside. Among the miniatures, is an enormous humanoid piece being sculpted for the city of Thornton. This is to be cast in bronze (mirrored and duplicated to be exact) and installed on site, in this case, as a gateway to the city.

But the miniatures are equally impressive. Everywhere you look, there are fantastical creatures, some animal, vegetable, mineral or a combination of all three. There are re-evolutions of projects past and my favorite, as you can possibly tell, is the "Bloager", a bloated yet jolly hot air balloon with a castle on it's back. Also appearing: accidental summoned dragons, and the occasional Ferrari. Thanks for a great tour Randy!

Ideas for the Shrine

When I first attended the Burningman Art Festival in Nevada, I stumbled across one of the strangest installations ever, the solid sculpture zoetrope. Just watch this video and you'll see what I mean.






Later on, in Tokyo, I took my animation students to the Studio Ghibli Museum. They had the same thing going on and it blew me away. I thought to myself, now here is a "shrine" to the art of animation.

For me, I'd like to emulate, if not top, something like this at the PlatteForum. I hear that we will have to enjoy the public, who will visit us often. I envision the shrine as a distraction from our real "work", not a barrier, but a pleasant, entertaining distraction.

See a stealth video here:

Aerial Stop Motion

Please check out this stop motion my friend Sarah Knowley showed me the other night. It is brilliant in its simplicity, and inspiring for what we are going to do.

It's called Her Morning Elegance, a music video by Oren Lavie. Enjoy!