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Invasion of the laser disc crate.

April 30th, 2007 by Crumpet

I got absolutely nothing accomplished today. I think I’m coming down with something. I tried to do one thing in class tonight… it wasn’t even for class — I was making a surprise something for a friend, and I screwed up the measurements, so I have to do it again tomorrow.

The good thing about today was that I arrived home to an enormous box of laserdiscs! Richie’s laserdisc player finally died, so he came around tonight and gave us all his old films. Apart from Lost Highway, which both of us consider a steaming pile of poo, everything in the stack is good stuff. There are some things in there that I haven’t seen and have been wanting to for a while. There’s also quite a lot of doubling up with our own film collection, but that’s to be expected. Hooray!

Invasion of the laser disc crate.

Posted in Film | | 4 Comments

Working until the cows come home.

April 29th, 2007 by Crumpet

I’ve been working my arse off on the animated short film all week. I had my crit on Friday, which seemed to go well enough, although the RMIT network was down and I couldn’t log into any of the computers to scan in the rest of my storyboard so that people could see the scene I shot as part of a whole. I could have stayed at home and done it, but didn’t want to risk being late to class.

Here’s the clip I showed. (Edited to add: there was actually another bit to the clip I showed, but I must have exported the wrong file when I made the streaming video… but you get the idea…)

I shot it on the coloured cardboard with the intention of keying different coloured out-of-focus photographs onto each different colour. I want the whole thing to have an otherworldly, ethereal feel, as the story is based on an old star myth. I finally figured out the keying thing in Final Cut Pro last night… and it looks like shit. The photos lose all their punch and beauty, and the keying really only works on the cutouts that are in focus. I’m shooting with the digital SLR so that I can get better quality images that have more control with focus, light and depth-of-field. The whole thing with that is destroyed with the colour keying.

I worked for ages just to get one frame to that quality, and eventually gave up. I’m shooting at home with the camera on a tripod, two 60-watt halogen globes in my desk lamps and another fluro desk lamp. The colours of the cardboard change slightly with the shadows, so instead of getting one blue, I have about five different shades of blue to key, and the same with the red and the yellow. I’m losing too much of the quality in the prints and the shots just by doing one set of colour-keying, let alone exporting the movie file and importing it to do the next stage of the colour-keying.

The plan now is to either use solvent transfer to get my images onto 300 (or so) gsm printmaking paper, or to do a bunch of hazy monoprints instead, and then reprint the lino on to that and reshoot. I think I’ll go the monoprint option, as getting colour photocopies for the solvent transfers will cost me a small fortune, and I have no money already. I will lose the flexibility that the original plan of colour-keying gave me, but it will look so much better this way.

Edited again to add: the upside of reprinting everything? I now have a whole bunch of adorable cows and the patterned prints that I can use as thank you cards when people buy stuff from my Etsy shop. Give me all yr moneys plz.

Posted in Animation, Etsy, photography, Art | | 2 Comments

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…

April 26th, 2007 by Crumpet

SuperCow!

Cows.

My first animation prints are almost ready for shooting… I just need to cut them out, stand them up somehow, move them around and take pictures. And edit.

First prints.

Pattern 1

Pattern 3

Pattern 2

Sleep now. Up early.

Posted in Animation, Art | | 0 Comments

Z is for Zen

April 25th, 2007 by Crumpet

Zen

That’s twelve solid hours worth of lino carving right there. My hand protector worked a treat, but my fingertips are sore. :)

This is my last photo in the Alphabet Shoot competition. People are still uploading their Z photos, but go and check out all the awesomeness from the entire competition in this photo pool.

Apart from being good photo fodder, prints made from the lino block will feature in the new animated short film I’m making. I was hoping to have all my lino carved and printed by yesterday (haha!) so I could start shooting today and tomorrow, but I still have a lot of carving to do today. So, the new plan is to print tomorrow morning (it’s a public holiday today in Australia, so the print shop isn’t open) and shoot something tomorrow afternoon in preparation for my crit in class on Friday. It’s going to be tight, but hopefully I can do it.

Posted in Animation, photography, Film, Art | | 4 Comments

Knitting to the rescue.

April 22nd, 2007 by Crumpet

Carving lino

I started carving my first big lino block for the year yesterday, and I have quite a lot more of it planned for this week. I don’t have the worst set of carving tools, but I don’t have the best, either, and about five minutes in I remembered how painful it is when the base of the tool is continuously pushed into the palm of your hand.

Not nice, and not something I could deal with all week.

The solution? An hour on the tram with a set of 5.5mm DPNs and some leftover Lamb’s Pride Bulky.

Hand protector

The first block is now finished and my hand is still intact. :)

Hand Protector, action shot

Posted in Art, Knitting | | 1 Comments

zomg! i’m famous on Teh Internets!

April 21st, 2007 by Crumpet

We went to Vetti and Joffa’s place last night for some backyard cinema. I’d only ever seen Blade Runner at the Moonlight Cinema in the Botanical Gardens (apparently this is a film I can only watch when I’m outdoors) and had forgotten pretty much every single thing about it.

We started talking about the origami when the film was over, and Vetti mentioned that she’d been talking about origami with one of her customers… who recommended my animation to her! How freaking trippy is that! Someone had sent him a link to it somewhere along the line. Now I want one of my customers to recommend it to me… I’ll have to start talking origami with everyone who comes into the store.

For those who haven’t seen Sadako’s Cranes, you can watch it here on my site as a Quicktime file or on YouTube — I recommend the Quicktime file, as it’s much better quality, but you can go to YouTube and rate me anyway, just for kicks.

Today I’ll be madly carving lino blocks to print up for the next animation I’m doing — I have a crit in class on Friday, so I really need to get my arse into gear.

Posted in Freaky Coincidences, Animation, Art | | 1 Comments

I say intaglio.

April 20th, 2007 by Crumpet

Sigh. I love me some Diesel Sweeties. First there was the yarny comics and the awesome Yarncore t-shirt that gets me so many compliments. And now there’s a a comic about printmaking. :)

Please keep in mind that whenever I ask you in to look at my etchings, I do actually mean it literally…

Posted in Random | | 0 Comments

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