Drawerings old and new

These drawings are for a book on a new style of japanese sword fighting. They will hopefully be ready to go to the publisher next week, i still have 10 left to do. They've been really fun, hands are such amazing and intricate things.
My hands have also been busy painting houses and organizing things preparing for a possible upcoming move. The computer is getting re organized too. I found some older drawings and things i think deserve to be posted here till i get my website re designed.

Changes

Verdie Mustful 1912- 2009

My grandma, Verdie Louise Mustful passed away on June 14 2009 at the age of 97. It's been exceptionally difficult for me. Not only was she my fathers mother, she was my closest friend. Taking care of her was never a chore, always sweet and kind with a spark of mischief. I'm very thankful I got to know her the way I did.
When someone this close leaves you it's hard to figure out how to go about life with out them, it's not just the person that's gone, it's everything that surrounded life with them. I can't go past her house (10 blocks from mine) with out wanting to stop in and give her a hug, I can't make dinner with out wondering if she'll be able to chew it with her dentures, i can't sew anything without wanting to show it to her, when i go out i still feel like i have to make sure there's some one to watch her.
I do take comfort in my faith and that some day we will be together again, but it will be awhile before i can adjust to her not being around. Keeping busy and focusing on the things that i couldn't do while i was taking care of her seems to be working so far. Here's a little of what I've been up to...







So, I got into a fight...
with a pot-hole, on my bike. pot-hole won. I flew four feet and landed on my face, my bike landed on me. Luckily there was an EMT near by and she checked me out, nothing too serious, chipped bone off my chin, no missing teeth but gashed lip, huge bruises on my legs and right palm and sprained fingers. She gave me Ibuprofen and some ice and I was able to walk the 2 blocks to the bar where we celebrated my friend Erin's birthday by drinking beer through straws(not recommended). Needless to say, couldn't do much art for a while and everyone kept looking at me like a battered woman and asking if I was in an abusive relationship.




In other bike related news, my friend Kevin works at the Sibley Bike Depot (non profit community ed) and asked if i would do some more art for the shop. They found some panels sitting by the dumpster and thought i could make them look pretty. Here are some sketches of what i may end up doing with them.
I did this while relaxing in northern Wisconsin with my friend Rox. I'm thinking of doing each critter on it's own panel in acrylic, or maybe doing some kind of scene.



Did these up at our cabin in Brained MN, leaning toward a scene, love the octopus but he doesn't really fit in with the others. gotta work something out. Been talking about doing some kind of art show fundraiser for the shop.


Talking about bikes and shops, I stopped by the Minnecycle hand build bike show a couple of weeks ago and was impressed by Eric Noren of PeacockGroove's Kill Bill bike. As well as many other spendy, pretty, cycles. I've also been enlisted in making a handle bar bag and need to get designing that.





Very recently, I've been teaching art classes at the Edina Art center. I did a class on "spirit" dolls and taught 3-6 year olds about how we use shapes and colors to express different feelings, how to sew without poking each others eyes out with needles, and the appropriate use of glitter glue. It was really fun to see the colors and shapes they chose and to see their individuality really come through in these dolls.

This was Mia's, she is 6 years old. We did drawings that represented the spirit of things we liked. She likes summer and soup and hot pink. She doesn't like sewing, but likes it when you do it for her. She also likes popcorn seeds and hides them under her tongue.

This is Annabelle's, she also likes summer. She likes french fries and pink. She is 5 and is friends with Mia. I love the way she went to town with the pipe cleaner curls.

This is Abagail's, she is 5 and is a good listener. Abagail likes sewing though she hadn't done it before. She likes fall, french fries and the color teal. She also likes Ariel in the Little Mermaid which is why her doll has long red hair. Ariel's is one of my favorrite characters from childhood. Abigail's doll also reminds me of Dorthy, from the Wizard of OZ.


This is Parker's doll, she is 3 and a half years old. She likes winter, snowball fights, french fries, the color red, and saying the word "poop". She did very well sewing for her age. She also is very good at cutting things, lots of things, including hair.



We tried sewing another doll but had a hard time listening and following directions with the roofers constantly banging and the girls screaming every time one walked in front of the windows. All in all things went well. I'm going to be teaching beginning drawing, recycled art, holiday crafts, and beginning animation. My first class starts September 14th so i gotta get my lesson plans in order. Classes go three hours two days a week and run through December 10th so I'll still have time to get another job, because i have no money, yay.








Just earned some money this week doing some illustrations for a website called My Every Wish. As soon as the site's up and running I'll post a link and you all can check it out. The client had their heart set on a rights managed image they found but couldn't afford. I think i did a good job of coming close to that style but still keeping my own flair. I may even be animating these guys if I can sell the idea, it's still on the table. These are now property of myeverywish.com




Animation wise, thanks to Shelley Noble, I purchased a Nikon cool pix camera with stop-mo abilities!! This is the first test with it. Love it.
And now I'm working on getting a studio space set up to start my animation club's first project "Officer Knut"(working title).
My goal is to finish this project and start getting my portfolio beefed up and beg for some kind of intern ship. I feel that i have allot of talent and skills, I just need some opportunity to apply them and see where I can go with it. I think I'm heading the right direction though.


Fellow animation club member John walks his fingers toward the camera...enjoy.

It's been a while

Well, haven't done much animating lately. I've made a bunch of stuff though. With all the praise it's been getting, I'm seriously considering opening a shop on Etsy. However, if I'm going to do that I'll need to get my self better organized so I'll have time and space for both animation and craftiness. A few of my Friends and I have decided to collaborate on a stop-mo/live action short and have been meeting every other week. Hopefully soon i can post some of our progress. Here's some of what i've been crafting lately...




This is the card I made for my friend Bridget's birthday. It's acrylic with ink outlines and a water color background and totally cute.




Bridget loves all things hedgie. For her I made this tiny hand stitched plush hedgie and a living garden for him to play in (the mushrooms are sculpted and painted). I hope Bridget's real hedgie Bootsy likes it too. I've heard he likes to drag YetiJr. around and attack him.



My pal Matty is on a cross country bike tour for the next few months. With the weather being so fickle lately, I made him these sweet custom arm warmers out of a pair of his old smart-wool socks. Gimme your old socks and I'll make you a pair too. They work great with gloves and are not intended for use by E-mo kids, serious cyclists only.



This funny little pillo bunny was made for my friend's little girl but now I want it for myself, she's only 2, she wont remember if I take it back, right? I should just make another one, I could make one for you perhaps!


I got impatient with trying to fix the Pippi puppet and wanted to see her move so bad, i did a quick and dirty test walk which DID NOT work what so ever, but it showed me in need to be patent and follow proper procedures. I still need to learn a thing or two about tie downs and how to make a proper detachable head (that doesn't spontaneously spring off but when you try and pull it off it won't budge) and that card board boxes weighed down with books may seem stable enough to animate on but are in fact not. Also my tripod broke(because i have a 4 foot square space to work and knocked it over with my big butt while securing a lamp) and i can't attach my camera to it any more. The frame capture software (framethief) trial has run out and can't afford to buy a license, and the other frame capture demo's for macs don't like my camera-still searchin for somethin.
Excuses, excuses.... Here's the monstrosity, it looks like she's trying to stumble away from a wreck. Not sure if I'm going to rebuild her or just move on to another puppet.

Building Pippi Progress

My shoulder's better enough now so i've been able to get some work done. I made a soft body of fiber fill and old nylons and clothes from bits of scrap fabric. I have some changes i still wanna make to the costume, the sleeves are too short when the arm's bent and i don't like the white stitching, overall functional though. The wig was fun to make but extremely tedious and i'm not sure how well it's gonna animate, i'm shellacking the hair with an acrylic varnish then possibly adding some tiny wires to keep it in shape. The hand's are pretty awesome except that the paint is cracking even though i added latex.
The biggest challenge is going to be how to animate the head. Right now the top half is baked sculpy and the top teeth are like dentures and baked so they keep shape and can be removed. The lower jaw is raw sculpy. I tried painting it and it seems to be ok if you don't play with it too much. I need to figure out how to get all the facial parts to blend together nicely. I really want to try painting with an airbrush too, acrylic is too gloppy.
I intend to do some more research on facial animation techniques and hopefully have a solution so i can animate next week.

A Character Emerges

This is the character I've come up with after playing around with an old bottle of ink (not indelible unfortunately)and did a quick coloring in ye ol photoshoppe... . She's two parts Pippi Longstocking, one part Eloise, and one part Thumbelina. I plan on doing some more sketches then try sculpting another head for the puppet body I've got pretty much together. Unfortunately I've had a bad arm and am going to get it looked at tomorrow and will hopefully be able to finish the puppet by Wednesday. I also am trying to think up some sort of antic to animate with her. Maybe interacting with an object, like the beer cap for a hat.

Puppet Exparament!

So i haven't been totally slacking off lately. That bit of playing with the pelham puppets got me interested in some bits and pieces of materials laying about. From those I've managed to hobble together a quick and dirty armature with dipped latex hands. I didn't have a clear idea of what i was going to make but wanted to try different materials. I used these plastic screw holder thingies for making rigid parts and tried to epoxy putty them in place...sorta works, they slip a bit, but using putty by it's self for rigid areas dosn't really work all that great anyway. I tried making a detachable head but have the wrong size tubing so am trying to find a work around for that. The dipping of the hands worked better than I thought it would seeing as how I only have mould building latex. I ended up not dipping as much as brushing layer after layer, blow drying each. I added a bit of acrylic paint to the thinned latex and did a few layers of color. Overall they seem to be working.
As soon as i get some batteries in my camera i'll post the next bit of progress. I'm allmost done with the body and am making a wig and replacement mouths at the moment. Hopefully i'll be doing animation tests with it this weekend.

pelham puppets

This is Hansel. His 'fro is made of lambs wool. His shoes go "clikity- clack". He wears lipstick.

Mama Bear likes to hula and do the mash-potato. Pinocchio has allot of mischief under his hat.


So I've been stuck in kind of a rut lately, listless and and indecisive, absolutely unable to start a new project. I couldn't bring myself to do any work at all, and so decided to play instead. I dug around in the closet till I found these guys. They were first played with in my mother's childhood and well taken care of so they lasted to my child hood. They brought back allot of memories and inspired me to just go ahead and make a few puppets just to play around with, no story or character in mind, to just play and see what happens.
I encourage everyone to take an hour and find a fond old toy and just play. Something wonderful will happen. Promise.