Season's Hot Diggity Blog

we got pieces

2012-02-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

OK, got the ball rolling on this crazy creature adventure. After a few squeemish days of aquatic anatomy study I began building this thing inside out. It's weird but I never really thought of crustaceans really having muscles like we do cause you don't really see any definition under the shell. Also if you wanna see something cool (and slightly disturbing) check out the colossal squid exhibition. So far the only thing I've had nightmares about is burning my hands with resin and not meeting the deadline!
The mechanics for this are coming along nicely. We have a cable system working for the legs, and a cool spine system my brother rigged up with a spring and some surgical tubing.

So far the materials used are 4 pounds of clay, two yards of wire, two rolls of aluminum foil, 7 glue sticks, a tube of epoxy putty, a package of guitar strings, and 6 pieces of K&S brass tube, and a oomoo silicon mold kit and the smoothcast 300 resin kit. Oh, and a few band-aids.
This has been a learning experience as all projects are. Mistakes happen, (particularly in the molding of this one) but if you hide them well enough no one will notice, right?
Next up I'll be experimenting with silicon casting.

A new exploration

2012-01-21T11:15:00.000-08:00

Into my dark side. Creating an ominous creature for an independent film by Bob Kundrat titled "The Ice Fisherman", check out the details on our Kickstarter page here. I'm offering pieces of the creature for donations to the film of $150 or more if any one is interested.

It's a refreshing departure from my previous cutesy and much smaller scale puppets. The biggest challenge so far has been confronting some fear issues with things that creep and crawl. I thought for sure I'd be having nightmares from researching such bizarre creatures but have a new appreciation for the infinite complexity of life. Looking at images of spiders and shrimp smaller than a dime through and electron microscope, they're an entirely different creature on that scale, mind blowingly cool. Also, through this I've become more tolerant of the harsh un relenting winters known here in the upper mid west. With out it we'd have many more buzzy,bitey, and stingy things to make life miserable.

Here's some images from the concept and design phase. Right now I'm finalizing the full scale blue prints and getting ready to map out the armature for sculpting and the rigging for the cable controlled elements. Then I'll be getting into mold building and casting with silicone. I'm really excited to be working in silicone, looking forward to some neat translucent effects when it comes time to pigment the skin.
More to come!

(all original sketches and concept art property of Season Mustful to be used exclusively for "The Ice Fisherman" 20012)

Muppet Time!

2011-12-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

My friend Kevin asked me to help one of his youth at Saint Paul News Network with a piece she was doing on puppetry. What a great excuse to make a puppet! The idea for this furry little guy began as a hood lining from a child's jacket. Then with some scrap foam, cereal boxes, and a couple old buttons slapped together with a bout 6 hot melt glue sticks, he kinda came together.
He gave the SPNN crew an introduction to TV puppetry and got them excited to create puppets of their own. I taught a workshop on puppet making with things you'd find in the recycle bin. The puppets they came up with were super creative.
Can't wait for the piece to air!

Cool Beans!

2011-11-29T17:43:00.000-08:00

My pal Eric over at EG Design just put up a great post about our process of making "Counting on a Friend". Go have a look see, you just might get inspired!
http://www.eee-gee.blogspot.com/

It's a wrap!

2011-11-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

Check out my latest venture in stop motion animation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mllVuaevzaQ

It started many months ago. My Friend Eric, director at EG Design came to my dad (director of Hotternell Studio) and I with the idea of doing a stop motion animation for his friend's band the Bazillions. What an adventure it's been.
This video has had an unusual process and is a real piece of learning experience.
Neither of us had done any real stop motion in ages, mainly working digitally these days.We wanted to keep everything very kid friendly, hand made, and simple for animating. Plus there was virtually no budget and we had to put our creative scrounging skills to the test.
There were several different ways we were thinking of coming about this video. Originally we thought to make everything from real materials then scan and animate it all digitally. But there's just something so appealing about actually pushing around those little dolls on a real set. After I built the puppets we couldn't resist the urge to keep it all animated in camera. I hadn't build the puppets for full stop motion animation though, and am surprised that we only had to preform one major "surgery", they really limped to the finish though. My Neighbor girls joined the production team and gave names to the characters. Patsy Potato is the purple one and Angelina Triangle is the orange one. The girls taught me how to properly play hop scotch and helped make miniature bowling balls, which they enjoyed painting with their nail polish. They also gave us some rad ideas for Patsy and Angelina's next big movie ( it involves skate boards and magic mice).
When we began the process we didn't have a deadline in mind either, just working on bits an hour here or there. That all changed when the band told us that they were doing a video release show November 19th, which meant we had about 2 months of week ends to finish prop building and start animation. That's where the real adventure began. We had to kick it into high gear and pull off some pretty tough shots pretty fast. Our heaviest used bit of equipment was the mic boom and good ol' duct tape.
Eric decided that for this production we should go all out and he purchased Dragon so we could animate in style. I can't believe we accomplished what we did with the time and resources we had. We pulled off 58 shots in about 65 hours, with set up and tear down time. Not too shabby for a fly by the cuff production. We even had some time for my dad and I to do some heavy wire and pin removal, and time for Eric to throw in some fancy camera stuff and special effects.
Learned so much on this one, can't wait to get started on the next.
For some more behind the scenes stuff check out
http://www.facebook.com/thebazillions

Up up and away

2011-06-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

I was going through my art of UP book and kept coming back to a character development sketch of Ellie that seemed to strike a note in me so I decided to sculpt it in plasticine. I love the attitude of confidence and spunk she gives for an old gal. Still one of the best movies I've seen.

Sculpting the hand was special to me, reminding me of my grandmas poor arthritic knuckles and the little gestures she'd make when talking of all the cows she'd milked,the one crooked finger she'd point and shake when she'd say "now whad'ya suppose that is?". She had the softest most loving hands.

Currently I'm working on character development and puppets for the next EGdesign /Bazillions music video and having a great time with that. We're still determining how much we want to keep stop motion and how much we can keep After Effects, I'm anticipating some pretty awesome results! More on that as it develops.

tiny notes...

2011-04-19T20:36:00.000-07:00

...From a tiny guitar.
This was really fun to make. I had some bamboo floor tiles sitting around and thought "why not?". Cassetti loves it. It only sort of makes 3 different notes but isn't that all you really need if you play it loud enough?

Card board prototype gave way to bamboo carved body.

Click for close up of elastic strings and better appreciation of wood grain

Sorry for the poor quality pics, I got a new computer and Adobe won't let me put the licensed creative suite from my old Mac to my new PC so I can pretty 'em up. Anyone want me to make them a tiny something to help pay for a new liscense?

" hey there butterfly lookin so fly...

2011-04-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

... tell me how did you get here, did you fall from the sky?"

Answer, no.
He was designed and digitally cut from tissue paper then rigged up for animation in After Effects. Working again for the talented folks at eg design (Director Eric Kridler and designer Gretchen Blase) for the Que Pasta's "Mr. Butterfly" music video release.

It was a big challenge, we had a small budget and tight deadline and being only the second time I've done any character animation in AE, not to mention the first time I've done any complex rigging, I think it turned out pretty well. I also got to do the character design which was fun, the paper cut out is a new look for me.

You can view the whole video here..on youtube
We've already got a pretty good response from in the kindie world, blogs like Zooglobble and OWTK. My firs press comments ever were on how cool the butterfly was to be wearing fingerless gloves. Nothing feels better than getting some small detail of your design recognized.

So the peeps at eg design and I are gearing up for yet another animated kid music adventure. Perhaps this time with puppets!!!

For a bit of color in this blog post , here are the shots I animated . (some are the rough version)

It's Career Day...

2011-03-25T19:56:00.000-07:00

...And I'm here to say...What I'll be some day...When I grow up!

I wanted to be an actress/ballerina/ archaeologist when I was little, now that I'm mostly grown up, I can be all those things, cause I chose to be an animator for my career. Animators can do anything in the whole wide world or out of this world even, what ever they dream up.

I've recently joined forces with the creative geniuses at eg design to help create some super fun music videos for the rockin' kindie band, the Bazillions, who just released their latest song "Career Day"(see full video and get the song stuck in your head).

After Effects CS5 Rocks!!! I cut my teeth on AE5.0 way back in 2006 and hadn't really done much with it other than video editing until recently. Seriously powerful stuff now and it the perfect bridge between my CG training and my stop motion passion. I can keep the texture and style and feel of stop mo but have the control of CG. I still have much to discover, much to learn, and it's exciting.

I'm planning to finally put into motion some ideas I've had for animating the Spaghetti Cassette character that's been gathering dust as of late. No longer do I have to figure out how to carve out space to build a set, I can just make little pieces, shoot them, and put them together digitally. It seems so obvious now.

Below are the shots I got to do for "Career Day".

The best part was choosing which expression to use, these kids were such great characters!

Our current project is a video for the song " Mr. Butterfly" by the QuePastas. I'm doing some character design and will be getting in some animation in too. Hopefully we'll be wrapping that in the next few weeks. There's allot more to come from all this so stay tuned.

CUTE!!!

Dude, you got somethn on your face...

2010-12-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

...And that would be a mask of Doritos.
I'm still picking up bits of chips off my floor.
Crash The Superbowl Doritos commercial competition entry produced and directed by Ben Krueger and Cole Koehler. My friend Ryan Tallant worked with them last year and their spot won. This year he was called on another job and handed the gig over to me, what a lucky break!
It's so much fun to see the final project all put together. The crew was awesome and learned a ton on that shoot and can't wait to do something like it again. Really hard to stop my self from laughing during the filming, the actor Brandon NeSmith was hilarious (and very patient and good natured to sit through almost 5 hrs of makeup like that!).

Hopefully we'll get chosen for the top 10, keep fingers crossed till Jan. 3rd to find out!

A Pink Dancing Dog...

2010-11-13T16:53:00.000-08:00

...In a soft grey fog.

One of my favorite books is Color Kittens by Margret Wise Brown, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen. I wanted to try interpreting the flat and graphic style in 3D form. Striking the right balance between the two was quite a challenge. The more graphic I tried making it, the less energy and personality it had. If you look at the illustration the dog's back is straight and quite long. Making the sculpted dog's back like this made the rest of the pose awkwardly off balance and wouldn't stay upright if i didn't weight the stand, so i shortened it, gave some contrapposto, and lengthened the legs a bit to achieve balance. The face was the hardest to interpret, being unusually pointy for a dog. Everyone kept asking if it was a pig! The collar and back of the jacket are fabric and the hat is felt as well as the pom poms on the jacket; otherwise he's super sculpy with acrylic paint. On the stand he's about 6.5 inches tall and turned out pretty darn cute and now is happily dancing among my plants.

As you may know I haven't been keeping up with all that's been going on with me as of late. There is one thing in particular that I'd like to share that was so mind blowingly awesome I still haven't fully recovered from it. (warning- this may turn into an epic post.)

On October 29th, ten minutes to noon, I was standing in front of Pixar animation studio in Emmeryville, CA, with my very good and generous family friends the Pearsons. Jack, myself, and Peter were anxiously awaiting our gracious host, Mr. John Halstead (super duper set supervisor), whom Jack (super duper song singing story strummin' man) had befriended while giving a house concert in the area. Before we met our host, we met the devil at the front desk, which didn't really surprise us at all because of all the other incredible stuff surrounding us. Then a life size Ken doll walked by followed by a hand full of Jedi knights, and we realized that even though Pixar is super awesome, there was something extra special going on. And Indeed there was. While enjoying a delicious lunch at the Luxo cafe, we were entertained by the annual Pixar Halloween costume contest, MC'D by none other than Mr. John Lasseter himself(!!!), and the Queen of Hearts, who threatened to "off with" our heads if we posted any pics of the goings on. And just when I thought things couldn't get any more awesome...I got to meet Pete Docter!!! At that moment my head exploded and I was left slightly catatonic. Then Jack gave a concert for the Pixar kiddies who are all ridiculously cute and my cheeks still hurt from smiling so much. The next day Mr. Halstead invited Jack to give a concert at his home and his family and friends were so sweet and welcoming. Truly the best time ever! Manny thanks to John and Jack.
My cup runneth over with joy.

So what have I taken from this phenomenal experience? You never know when opportunity will knock, luck favors the prepared, and dreams can come true.
Cliche' perhaps, but I'd been wallowing in self pity, not being able to support my self making art, scrubbing toilets to make a buck, searching job listing after empty job listing, and stealing time to work on projects I'd start but never finish. This trip really helped shake me out of it, talking with other artists about their journey to creative success made me realize what it is exactly that I want from the industry and where I might be able to fit.
I want to work at a place that creates meaning full content, memorable characters with stories that will be passed down through generations. Characters with quirk and charm and depth and detail. I want to work with a like minded and slightly nerdy crew at a fun and family oriented place in a warmer climate. I'm going to have to work allot harder to earn a position at a place that can provide that. So I'll be beefing up my sculpture portfolio (making things seems to be my strong suit more than designing or animating them) and relentlessly hounding studios that fit that profile till I get something (even an unpaid internship would be nice if it can get me away from the snow!).

But before I do any more new works I'll have to wrap up a few of those old projects. Here's a test animation of O'l Flossy I never got posted and the boot repair progress on Cassetti. I'll also be posting a link after the 15th to the Dorito's commercial competition entry I created some cool makeup effects for (vote for us!).

(das boot!)

Baker Boy!

2010-10-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

Created a super cute trademarked character for Baker Boy Bakery which was a really fun.
The process was challenging because the bakery had a trade mark character that they were quite attached to but because it was quite old and had been used in print for so long, had become deteriorated, and needed some serious clean up. I worked with Tartan Marketing to help create an updated version of the bakery's original character with out loosing any of the warmth and charm the bakery identified with in their original.

Apart from Baker Boy, I've done some proposal animation, teaching, test animation on Flossy, and patch work on Cassetti. I've also been working on my After Effects skills, all of which I hope to be posting about soon.

FLOSSY

2010-07-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long time since i've last posted. Been busy teaching, illustrating, cleaning, visiting, and making this guy. O'l Flossy. His name is flossy cause i made him from an empty floss container (mint waxed of course, the cinnamon kind is too sweet) and some aluminum wire and a ton of hot melt glue for the armature. I figured i was safe using hot melt glue cause he's so small. Also, the glue is pretty strong and flexible, and i'm not going to use super hot lights that may melt the glue, plus, it's not stinky and wont make me sick and it's cheap. His shirt is felt, pants an old sock, hat is old fabric fused to paper, nose carved from a bit of lousy old eraser, mustache wire and felt, eyes are beads set in clay, gloves and boots made from old chamois leather, belt old leather, and buckle a bit of old credit card painted with acrylic. I have yet to do an animation test with him but so far he's working. The hands turned out really well, so i imagine his character making all kinds of crazy gestures with them and i'm going to make a rig for him to jump with cause i imagine he's a pretty high strung little fella and has a tendency toward getting hopping mad over little things. Still trying to think of ideas for how to put him and Cassetti in a story together. their sizes are so different it wouldn't do well to put them both in the same scene. Still developing ideas for them.

Capture Device Test

2010-06-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

There's been some trouble finding compatible live feed frame capture software for the mac that's also compatible with my cameras. Here's a quick and dirty test with my loverly Nikon Coolpix L15 and a trial version of Boinx's IStopMotion 2.0.8. It's pretty straight forward software and resembles the iMovie interface. The camera itself has a stop motion feature that i love but it's pretty primitive and low quality. I need to play a bit more with the iStopMotion preferences to figure out how to get a better quality image if possible. The onion skinning feature was a little tricky, it didn't seem to contrast enough. I also need to find a way to get the camera to NOT auto focus for every capture! I made my self dizzy watching this test, i'd have to take several preview shots to get one focused closely enough to store. Does anyone know if placing sort of a target card to focus on, quickly removing it before each shot, would help steady it?
At VanArts we used an early version of FrameThief which i liked very much. I had tried downloading a newer version last year but it wasn't compatible with my camera (olympus C-700Ultra) which is a bummer cause it's not letting me download another trial to see if it will work with my Nikon. I also looked at Smoovie and the seemingly spectacular Dragon Stop Motion but my Power Book G4 is 8 years old now and just doesn't have what it takes anymore (i'm still running OS 10.4.11 and 768mb ram). If anyone has any ideas of other Mac software i can try please send me a link.
All in all, Cassetti is so much fun! He's such a gentleman. Through playing with him in this test i got a better feel for his personality and how he's going to move. I get DeVotchka's "A Mad And Faithful Telling" racing through my head when i put my hands on the puppet, might have to develop something with that. The tie downs for this puppet are still giving me trouble, can't seem to get them tight enough, he's slidin' all over in this test. I added another layer of crescent board to give me some more leverage but alas. The mustache animates pretty darn well, i was worried it might crack cause i made it from yarn and Elmers glue. Plasticine eyelids are not fun though, kept knockin' off the hat trying to get tools in there and it takes too darn long to re shape (I don't know how you clay fans do it). Think i'll try sculpt and bake ones instead. The super glued &re epoxied boots seem to be holding now i put a little latex over the wire (thanks Shelly!) and I've learned where the bad pressure points are and how to avoid moving them.
This is SO EXCITING! Cassetti will LIVE!

Trials and Errors

2010-06-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I started working on assembling some kind of set. I had a bunch of foam board laying around and decided 2 layers of that would be sturdy and easy to drill through. Also it's just about the right size for my limited work space ( a 3x2 foot Masonite board wedged between the lip and drawer of my writing desk and another Masonite board placed on my bed). I've been languishing over what material to cover the floor with so I made a little test piece. One side is some bits of left over oil base clay with sand in it and painted, the other is good ol' Elmers Glue with sand and painted. I think i like the glue and sand better.
As I was testing the tie downs getting ready to animate, the right boot snapped and the left cracked. Fabrication fail. I used a larger gauge wire for the legs and it was difficult to bend, too much pressure on the point where the wire was inserted into the boot (half way) and the sculpy snapped. I super glued the boot back together but it's really not strong enough to animate. so I'm trying to think of a solution. In retrospect i should have made the wire extend into a tie down loop at the toe like my other puppets (don't remember why i didn't), and built the boot up with epoxy putty then sculpted over it. Perhaps I can still try that, or make a mold and try to make a resin boot (but that's toxic and stinky and I'd like to avoid it) Anyone have another idea for a fix?
Puppet building is HARD, i really enjoy sculpting and designing and sewing and painting, but getting the darn structure to work is HARD! Also (from the 5 frames of animation i did get done before the boot broke) I realized that his giant square head and arms sticking out of his sides is going to make some goofy looking archs, which could produce some pretty funny (funny ha ha, not funny eeew) limited actions and would be quite the animation challenge.
Good thing there's allot of others out there experimenting and learning along with me, comparing notes and drawing inspiration from fellow Stop-Mo bloggers.

As a side note:

An odd thing happened. I received a package in the mail form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (university division). My wallet had been returned to me after it had been stolen while attending school at Van Arts 4 years ago. A kind of eerie experience, like a time capsule, memories of experiences forgotten, a part of my identity frozen. It was in pretty bad shape, made me wonder what happened to it, had it fallen into the hands of a real bad criminal? Involved in a drug bust? Did someone use it as their own or try to pass themselves off as me? ( my SS card was missing!)
It really brought on a bit of introspection, who was i in the photos that remained intact? Who have i become since then, what do i keep in my wallet now that i value? And why is it being returned to me now? All the cards have been replaced, i have new photos (still no money in the wallet ;p ) What is the universe trying to tell me? Something to think about.

Spaghetti Casetti

2010-06-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've been working on getting my recycled jewelry stuff going for my debut as Odds and happy endings. My friend Wendy of Claire Monet helped put together a craft show at a local coffee shop so it was a good opportunity to try hawking my wares. It was kind of quiet and rainy that day so i didn't sell much, but boy did i learn allot. I'm working on getting some decent pics of these pieces to post on Etsy and getting up the guts to apply for another coffee shop craft show.

While digging through junk for jewelry making, i came across a bag of old cassette tapes that has been cluttering up a corner. I remembered seeing a Tim Biskup cassette monster toy on Vinyl Pulse a while back and thought, "why not make a puppet out of these old cassettes that will probably just end up as trash if i don't do anything with them?" So I did.
Here's the character I came up with, my friend Ryan dubbed him Spaghetti Cassetti. I still have to flesh out his character a bit more and what i want to do with him. I love the old spaghetti westerns and want to play with that and the fact that he's made from a cassette. I imagine him playing the guitar and tapping his foot. He doesn't have a mouth, but the mustache is animateable and the eyes, made from beads and clay, will animate.
I had tried an experiment before with the Capable puppet, making the hands from painted layers of Elmer's school glue with success. I tried it with Cassetti but with less than perfect results, so we'll see how they animate, so far they crack, but it's easy to fix. Think I'll go back to latex build up hands for the next puppet.
Attaching the nose was also a problem, right now it's just superglued on, not very sturdy. If i were to do it again I'd drill a hole and attach it with a wire. I also liked playing with color on this puppet, doing a few quick studies before deciding what i liked. I painted the shirt 3 times (all those squares, very tedious work!) . I just did one bit at a time, only a rough idea in place, the nose first then the boots, the 'stache then the eyes. Watching the character emerge, it's been a really fun experiment.

I felt that Cassetti needed a buddy to interact with, so i pulled a dental floss box out of the trash, and started some sketches of what this buddy (or nemesis?) might be like. I'm leaning toward #1 and calling him Saucy Flossy. The only trouble with paring him with Cassetti would be the size, Flossy is half the height and width.
I'm working on making a set too. Getting out some foam core and carving a plateau/ desert scene and using lots of color. I'm also learning basic electronics with the help of my brother and want to create some very cool lighting with tiny tiny bulbs. I'm also thinking about creating some animateable cacti of brilliant colors.

I've been also reading "the Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron which has been absolutely fantastic for opening up to my "inner creative child". She talks about the need for play and one of my favorite things to do as a kid was to make things out of old shoe boxes or tin cans for my dolls. Come to think of it, that's probably why i like stop mo stuff so much, it's like playing with my dolls again.

Lately it's been hard to be a responsible adult, trying to find a steady paying job, and allow time to still play and create, but the book is starting to help me see the possibilities and where to better direct my energy. Hopefully that means more posts (posts = actually doing work)!
Time to work... and by work i mean play!

Loki

2010-03-31T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've been sick and whiny lately but am determined to battle what i think might no longer be just a nasty cold, and actually more like some weird flu (where you don't have to puke but have the shakes and fever), or worse, the beginnings of mono, with the way my glands are swelling and i keep falling asleep. I'm also considering the possibility if having inhaled too many super glue fumes (it's not supposed to make fabric start smoking right?) and am going to mutate into some horrible mutated mutant. Here's Loki, which in my "delicate state of health"(cough, gasp, wheeze), mustered enough strength to finish.
Having been in bed with nothing to do for the last few days , boredom has supplied some great ideas. The puppet previously posted had suffered terrible injury (due to my ill state and frustration with a pliers). Now I've managed to come up with a creative use for the damaged puppet, which i will post when i feel good enough to later.

Animation beginnings

2010-03-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

My friend Kari gave me a wonderful book that was just begging for me to animate it. I decided to go ahead and build the puppet of the main character but need to get permission from the author and illustrator to go any further with it. Here's the first few steps of the first test puppet. The currently out of print book is called "the very persistent gappers of frip" by George Saunders, illustrated by the brilliant Lane Smith. I really want to capture the graphic and textural quality of the book illustrations and am using some materials I'm not custom to working with. I decided to make the head of a Styrofoam ball which i carved (and learned, by accident, while carving that if you are to attempt this at home; you'll need to wear a mask of some sort to keep from inhaling the bits that cling to everything.) Eyes and mouths will be exchangeable pieces of cut out paper.
The carved head was then coated with my new favorite material, Elmer's school glue!!! that stuff is awesome, i decided to try it on the hands instead of latex and it worked brilliantly! The armature is simple aluminum wire with plumbers epoxy, which i still am not fond of working with. The body with a bit of fabric batting and held it in place with an old bit of nylon stocking and now we're ready for paint, hair and costume. I was using faux fur for the hair but am looking for something better yet.
more to come.

Long time no see

2010-03-12T09:56:00.000-08:00

I'm slowly beginning to emerge from hibernation now that the temperature has been up around the 40's the last few weeks. Here are some illustrations for a project i'm doing for my cousin Wes's planetarium show he's running in Barnes County ND. The theme is Norse Mythology and the constellations. Researching this has been really time consuming cause it's such great stuff! There's stories of giants, magic necklaces, dwarfs, monsters of the most horrid sort, magic and poetry; great stuff for animation material. Plus researching what life was like for a Viking, looking at awesome mummies, ancient carvings, and trinkets left for the afterlife.
Here we have Odin, Freya, Saga, and Sif. Still have to do Thor, Balder, and Loki, as well as a few battle scenes (not something in my usual portfolio of cuteness). I'm doing these all in Photoshop with vector shapes and realize I really need to get over my fear and anxiety of working in Illustrator, my computer would probably be less crashy and i'd be able to work faster. I'll try it for the next three characters and see if i like it any better.

In other news, animation stuff is still on hold till i finish a few other outstanding projects and promises for others. I'm working on a sculpt of my brother's World of Warcraft character. This is a challenge because for the most part, the design is lacking and the only reference I have is from screen shots of the game (why does the character have to be poorly posed and constantly moving in that obnoxious way?!) He seems to think i can sell them to his fellow nerdy types, we'll see. Here's the progress so far.

P.S.

COMING SOON!!!
Odds and Happy Endings is the official name of the shop I've started on Etsy for my crafty type endevors. I'll be putting up a bunch of Jewelery and things i've made from reused materials for sale. I'm also in the thick of getting that handel bar bag done so watch out for that!

Wild Animals! Part 2!

2010-01-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

OK, these are ready to go! And the yeti made from a cereal box is on it 's way to live with the talented Mr. Awesome. Now I'm gonna switch gears and get my space set up for some puppet makin! And bag sewin! and possibly some knittin and jewelery makin but i'm getting carried away now.

Wild Animals!

2009-12-31T11:57:00.000-08:00

You'll have to wait till next year for the next two in the series. Just hope they arrive at my friends before their new baby does!

Latest work

2009-12-21T18:49:00.000-08:00

Things have been crazy for me again so i haven't accomplished much. I've been working 3 jobs, finally quitting one which has allowed enough time for me to finish these. TheLill' Chicken eating a bad worm was made from a Pocky box and the Yeti from a Frosted Mini Wheats box. That gives you an idea of what kind of diet I've had lately.

With the holidays looming i've been hitting up allot of the local craft fairs for gift ideas and had a bit of a wake up call. I need to get my stuff out there, so my new year resolution is to have an Etsy shop up and running by the end of January. I already had an order which i just finished.
These are for my friend Kevin's sisters. The little boy rockin' the pots and pans is Reider, he's 2 now and into raisins and different modes of transportation. The darling pooch is Bella, she's very fond of her stuffed dino and thinks she's a lap dog. They're painted in acrylic on reused board with color pencil details. Right now I'm working on some paintings for my good friends Stephen and Amanda's baby which is due the first week in Januray (soo excited!)
The other wake up call I've had was that this is supposed to have been my animation blog, and so far, zero animation!!! So as the Italians say "basta!" enough! I've been asked to produce an animation for a friend's buisness and starting the 1st ( or 2nd depending on how hard i partied the day before) I shall begin the process of making animation magic and post it's progress (for really real this time). So this is all I'll have till next year! Till then, Merry Christmas and a very joyous new year.

This is Reider, he's grown a bit since this pic was taken.

These are the preliminary sketches.

Finished Product.

This is Bella, she really is beautiful, isn't she?

Preliminary sketches.

Finished product.

Drawerings old and new

2009-10-28T13:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-20T15:10:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-04-09T12:43:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-01T11:17:00.001-07:00

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.

Coraline Prizes!!!

2009-03-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

My goodies arrived today! Thanks to everyone at LAIKA, Big Honcho Media, and AnimateClay that made all this possible. I received a Coraline button key t-shirt, collectors edition Coraline book with movie still insert and bookmark , Coraline game for the Wii (I don't have a Wii but am sure someone would let me play it on theirs), some nifty Coraline alphabet cards, fun Coraline buttons for my messenger bag, Coraline pen and my favorite so far, the metal Coraline button key.

Here's a detail of the book insert. I didn't think it would be legal to show the whole thing, so if you're curious about the rest, I'd suggest perhaps running out and buying a copy for your self.

Detail of the nifty alphabet cards. Charming phrases on each. The front is the same as the back.

My favorite, the button key. I wonder if it would fit in any of my doors?

Wonder what it would be like to have button eyes...

CrankyPants

2009-03-11T15:04:00.000-07:00

I just finished the creation of YetiJr. and already he's been getting into trouble. He's mighty cranky after getting stuck in a bail of wire, lucky his pal Barnaby mouse was able to gnaw him out of there. Still grumpy from hurt pride. I hope he'll be happier with my friend Bridget.

My pal Rox has Yeti Sr. and he's grumpy cause it's still cold out. Yeti's are always cranky cause they hate the cold. Rox keeps him right next to the radiator and he's still scowling.
Let me know if you'd like to try and keep a Yeti happy, I'd be glad to set you up with one.

I WON!!!!!

2009-02-26T19:27:00.001-08:00

Yippee! I won first place in Animate Clay's Coraline Puppet contest.(fish, you won't have to eat your shoes!) You should check out all the other entries if you haven't already done so, they gave me a pretty good run for my money. A big thanks to Marc Spess, the admin of animate clay, for getting together the contest and finagling some sweet prizes. I can hardly wait for the mail to come, I'll post pics of all the goodies. The contest has introduced me to some great new contacts and animation folks. Of course a big thanks to everyone that worked on Coraline for making such an astounding and stupendulously crafted film! Go see Coraline! (again!)
It's also got me super pumped to get started on my next project and to beef up my portfolio.
Unfortunately my power cord to my now ancient laptop blew up and melted. Most of my work for the giraffe project was on my laptop and can't be accessed till a new cord can be acquired. Hopefully within the next week. I feel so lost with out my laptop, I may have some dependency issues...hmm...

Finished Mr.B!

2009-02-23T11:59:00.001-08:00

Well, here he is in all his glory. The Amazing and stupendolous Bobinsky. He was allot of work but worth it. I had to see the movie 4 times to get him to look right, that's just one of those sacrifices an artist has to make for their work i guess. I'm having trouble getting images to upload on the animate clay site, hopefully it will work out before the deadline today. I may add more detail shots to this later.
Everyone reading this should check out the other contest entries. Allot of them have something very subtle that captures the essence of the character, it's fun to see the different interpretations.
I'm gonna see if my freind's brother can shoot the scupt better for my portfolio, kinda fuzzy at the feet there.
Now i have to get going on my next project.

Totally Baked

2009-02-18T09:00:00.001-08:00

Super Sculpy is awesome. These are pics from before the baking. Since the baking i've sanded it a bit and sealed it and began painting. Now for the details! I love the tiny little tedious bits that make things look amazing. Bobinski will soon have a shirt and, most importantly, his mustache.

Ruh-roh!

2009-02-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

Well, i think i should have left well enough alone. I broke a bit of the neck off after i had baked it, i can fix it, but because of the way i built the armature underneath, it will probably break again if i try and animate it. The mouth also got a bit distorted when i baked it, even though i was super careful. It shrunk in an uneven way so i tried to carve it a bit to make it fit.
At this point i'm thinking this is gonna make a better maquette than a puppet. Unless, someone wants to give me $100 for my birthday coming up so i can get some ultra cal 30 and a GM foam latex kit. (hint hint)
I'm running out of time and i want to get a moustache on this guy. If i enter a maquette i can allways try making this animate later. Argh.

Boots!

2009-02-12T18:55:00.001-08:00

So Bobinski's got boots. Unfortunately I won't be able to make him do any walkin. Maybe just shift his weight a bit, or stand on one foot. Now i'm gonna separate the head and mouth and do some open ones. Then I can start cutting out the joints and bake it. I've been having a hard time keeping all the little bits of sweater fuzz off the clay, It's just so darn cold here nothing but wool keeps me warm.

Experimentation!

2009-02-11T11:08:00.000-08:00

So, I went to see Coraline on the 6th and was completely blown away. Wow. So I'm uber psyched to get this puppet finished. After seeing the Bobinski puppet in action I realized a few snags in my choice of materials and method of creation. Something Laurence, one of my instructors at VanArts told me, has been ringing in my ear, "Don't fix your mistakes, disguise them." I think he was referring to some problem I was having with gimbel lock on a CG puppet, but it applies here.

I am unemployed (which will hopefully change next week when i start doing PCA work 2x/week) thus very poor and have to make due with the materials i have. I wanted to make a proper foam latex puppet with all the trimmings. So i did some experimentation with materials i had that were similar to the ones used in actual practice. I've never tried casting puppets in latex, but after watching "Foam Latex Puppet making 101" by Kathi Zung, which I highly recommend, I tried a tiny experiment. I made a tiny mold from the left over plaster from a mask making project . I learned that regular old plaster isn't a very good substitute for UltraCal 30. But i could use it for some things.

A some what effective way to do a press mold. I may use this to make replacement mouths. This plaster is very fine and holds decent detail but is easily chipped or scratched, or as in this pic, broken. I Had tried casting with liquid latex but even after sealing the mold the latex had a funny reaction and would not set up, just got bubbly and peeled up. I thought it was a reaction to the acrylic sealant and used crystal clear like Kathi's tutorial suggested, but no avail.

Second Experiment: Finding solutions for joint problems.

Since I wouldn't be able to do a proper foam puppet and i'd already started my sculpt in Super sculpy, I did a few experiments to see what my options were. Fellow sculptor/animator M-FlemJr. gave me some great advice and told me that i could bake it and submit this as a sculpture. However, i really wanna see it come to life (after working on it so long i've really started to absorb his personality, even talking to myself in Bobinski way, is weird? No?).
I could just paint the sculpy and animate it as is, but the paint would keep coming off and the clay would separate from the armature and just be a headache. So deciding I'd have to bake it, tried an experiment to see if i could control where it breaks. I made a test leg that had an epoxy joint covered in clay which i then baked and bent to see where it would crack. Seeing the range of motion i could get with out it completely breaking off i decided to try filling the gap with sculpy then coating it with super thin layers of acrylic tinted liquid latex. Then i tested the joint again. What i got was pretty awesome. I thought the clay would get all out of shape when bent but the latex kept it pretty much in place, it creased in a natural fashion. The only problem was that after a minute of constant flexing the latex rolled up cause i had only done half the joint but a little super glue should fix that. I think i have a viable solution.

I added some tie downs after finding a super deal on a package of assorted nuts and bolts at the dollar store. I also got a great deal on a 2lb bag of assorted tape!

Separating the sculpt I begin adding the boots. When that's all done I'll make some cuts on either side of the joints then bake it, fill the gaps, and coat it all with hundreds of layers of latex. I'm a little scared. If anyone can suggest a better fix, please let me know, i will probably be baking this Friday.

smoothed head

2009-02-10T10:00:00.001-08:00

So I've worked on the details of the face a bit more and smoothed it out a bit with some mineral oil, which brought back some unpleasant childhood memories of having to ingest that terrible stuff. I think i'm going to do replacement mouths so i've left the expression blank. I'll cut the mouth out and bake both parts then try making a mold and press a new blank mouths to sculpt new expressions into.

The makeings of a head

2009-02-02T12:48:00.001-08:00

So slow and steady wins the race. I've been pretty busy lately and haven't worked on it much but have started to block in the head. It seems so simple but it's tricky. Can't be too long or too thin and the curve has to be just right. Still working on it. Hopefully i can post again tomorrow.
I'm off to the zoo today with Kari. Hopefully I'll have some good sketches to post too.

Blocked Out

2009-01-26T15:03:00.000-08:00

Next in the process...Blocking in volumes and getting the proportions and shapes. This has been a bit of a headache cause I haven't been able to find a good back or side view. I also think the placement of the arms got off a bit when I epoxied them on there. It's not too bad though and may be able to fudge it, kinda running out of time. Ah well, I'll have to rely on my superior artistic intuition and anatomical knowledge to direct me. Most of the reference I'm using is from Shannon Tindlle's blog post of the actual Coraline puppets at the Comic Con. I love his work and am so glad he had time to post those pics.

I love how a-symmetrical Mr. Bobinski's design is. There are so many fun contrasts too, straight skinny legs vs. fat round belly, long body vs.short shirt/shorts. The detail of it! The wrapped leg is beefier than the other. I can't wait to do the belly hair and the moustache!
O how i admire facial hair, on guys, not so much on me. Although Kari may have a few pics of me looking rather dashing in a moss- stache.

Progress! an armature

2009-01-26T14:42:00.000-08:00

So here's the beginnings of a Bobinski puppet sculpt. The wire I had to use for the armature is copper and not really the best to work with, but I'll make due. I had a heck of a time getting the Quick Steel off my hands, next time I'll remember to use gloves. I wonder if putting artist's cream (like the stuff for painters) would protect the hands or if it would have a weird reaction?

Inspirational Sketch!

2009-01-23T14:27:00.000-08:00

Wouldn't it be fun to follow your giraffe friend's footsteps in the snow?

The girl in this sketch is too young looking for my story. Here's some more exploratory sketches.

These seem a bit young two, i like the lower ones. Kari likes the one with the star on the right cause it resembles her in a way. Definitely like the hat.

Super cute girl giraffe! i think the style is gonna be better suited for 2d though.
Still working on it.

Closer but still too flat for being a puppet.

I'm going to try fleshing these out a bit more, i think i need something a bit more stylized.
I sure could use some feed back. I'm going to start doing some color concepts soon too.
Most of this will have to wait till i finish my deadline for Animate Clay's Coraline puppet making contest. I'm super stoked!!! I'm doing Mr.Bobinski and will post about my progress with that very soon.

2009-01-23T09:15:00.000-08:00

Yay! Something to blog about! I'm actually going to stop talking about doing my own stop-mo animation and do it...and talk about what I'm doing while doing it. Novel idea huh?
Hopefully this will motivate me to be more productive. The more feed back I get the better, so comments, questions and inspirations are encouraged.
Still not sure how all this exactly works, layout's a bit awkward...
but...away we go!

(Giraffes! exclaims Kari)

One of my closest pals and art buddy Kari and I recently went to the Como Zoo to escape the bitter cold and drear of winter. We let our hands and souls thaw out in the tropical habitat for a bit before going to draw one our favourite animals the giraffes.

(awkward smile from me)

I hadn't seen them since the summer when they were happily romping around in the big outdoor pen. They were now sadly stuck indoors in a cement cell smaller than my living room, with only a plastic jug for water and a steel basket for food. The littlest giraffe tried to run around but would slip and crash into its parents or the wall. So sad. I could hardly hold my pencil. I talked with their keeper a bit and apparently there's another slightly larger pen that they are "trained" in. Still, quite sad when you see all the happy monkeys with their trees and toys. Don't the giraffes deserve at least a fake tree if they have to be inside all day?
If only they could be outside. Too bad they're stuck in Minnesnowta.
Then Kari gave me a brilliant idea. If I was little again, and thought that the only reason giraffes couldn't go out in the winter cause it's too cold, I'd give them a hat, scarf, and legwarmers to keep them warm so they can go out and play like me.
Thus my stop-mo project came to be. Here are the first sketches.

One of the keepers said people believe that the giraffes' horns are alien transmittors!!!
Perhaps a story to be animated at another time.