noogie

Travels

2009-10-13T20:33:00.000-07:00

Just back from a week of trade shows and seminars for work.

It was the annual screen printing wing ding and this year they held it in New Orleans.

It was my first time in the city and although I didn't have a lot of free time I did get a chance to walk around the city a bit and get a sense of the place.

The city is steeped in History and features the oldest church in the United states, built in 1727. I saw a good number of boarded up storefronts, but for the most part it seems the downtown area is back on its feet after Katrina.

One of the highlights of my trip was meeting an online buddy Jeffery Roche aka Ubatuber.

Had a great pow wow about all things stop motion and he even brought his Jenny Greenteeth puppet. Let me tell you it looks incredible in person.

"That one eye just lookin' at ya."

Great stuff. I am really looking forward to seeing it animated.

We got to do that again Jeffery!

Jack gets some toys

2009-10-04T23:27:00.001-07:00

The time sure does get away from me some times, never intended to go this long without a post.

but anyway...

I am building a Jack in the box puppet for a short animation bit I have planned.

Part of the set will be some kids style wooden blocks.

I have been messing around with a laser cutter we have at work and found it does a pretty nice job of engraving wood as well as just cutting parts. I really like the raised letter form of old kids blocks and it seemed a perfect match.

I am using some baltic birch plywood and cutting it up, putting a bevel on the edges and glueing it up to make little blocks.

Then its off the the laser for some engraving, light sanding and painting.

Here are some progress shots along with a sample side panel that will be used for the bigger jack in the box.

Things that stick

2008-01-26T15:46:00.000-08:00

It started as a late nite idea to get done before the holidays
it turned into a bigger job than I anticipated but it was still fun.
A little screenprinted magnet and sticker project. Here is just a taste.

Marcel Marceau, RIP

2007-09-23T23:29:00.000-07:00

22-Sep-2007
The passing of an original
Marcel Marceau leaves us at the age of 84

spotted on the BoingBoing
mf

Not the first

2007-09-19T23:56:00.000-07:00

I am sure I am not the first to notice this short film but Madame Tutli-Putli looks great, check out the web site with some behind the scene interviews. Apparently this is Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski first pro film. Fantastic set design and great atmosphere.

Seen at JNash

2007-09-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.

-Bernard Shaw

Well what do you know!

2007-09-11T00:06:00.001-07:00

Mark Ho get's a Cover

2007-01-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

Mark Ho, the creator of the amazing Artform #1
Just got the cover of Scientific American.
The article is not about him or his work, just a cover illustration -
still pretty cool. Grab a copy if you want to see a hi res photo of his
incredible work. Check out this link for his web site. And another page here with more details.

Hiatus

2006-12-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

How does the saying go? Up to my eyeballs with alligators.
Things are crazy busy right now, so the blog is on a break until the first of the year. Unless of course I find some extra time in my bottom sock drawer. After the 1st it's back with a vengence to finish the armature and puppet so some animation fun can begin.

Bob Burns is a Great Guy

2006-09-29T00:26:00.000-07:00

I just got back from another fine evening at the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Bob Burns brought the Original King Kong armature to the screening of King Kong (1933)
A real treat to see Kong on the big screen. But an even bigger treat was to see, hold and pose the original
Kong and Mighty Joe Young Armatures. I was in armature geek heaven!

Bob was letting folks from the audience hold and even pose the armature.
Pretty damm cool if you ask me. Both armatures are build like a rock, they still move well today.
For such an early armature it is an amazing piece of engineering and machining.

If you have seen the behind the scene stuff for Peter Jackson's new King Kong
you may have seen Bob. He's a great guy with all kinds of great stories.

Just press the print button

2006-09-27T22:54:00.000-07:00

Ever since Ubatuber did a little printmaking of the sweet jenny greenteeth, I have been thinking of doing some prints, not woodblock but screen print or serigraph if you must. ...been playing around with some colors heres one.

Hey at least it's a post.

The Amazing Mr. Rivett

2006-09-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

There is a machining web site that I frequent with some amazing craftsmen. A fellow that builds displays for museums will sometime post things he has made. He has just posted another amazing tool box that I just had to share. Everything works, the saw has little teeth on it that cut, the planer will shave wood etc. This guy is amazing. Enjoy!

Here is the original link .
and another link to a scale model classroom he built. Remember everything you see was made by hand from scratch and it works. Check out the postage stamp for and idea of scale for the classroom. It's really just insane how great his work is.

Kicking up some dust

2006-09-11T00:12:00.000-07:00

Kicking up some dust or Look Ma, no arms!

Well here at last are the innards of the character Jack Sawyer whose green head you may have seen earlier. Well at least the bottom part of his innards.

The chest/shoulder block has been redesigned, the one shown is not ready for prime time and probably never will be. I am pretty happy with the feet up to the spine. The rest is to follow soon, been on Hiatus too long time to start making chips again.

Spicin' up the Frame

2006-08-23T16:31:00.000-07:00

If you are a regular reader of boing boing
you will have seen this. If not here is the original link .
“Wally Wood’s 22 frames that always work” is a comic book cheat sheet classic that may help the filmmaker spice up an otherwise dull frame. Not all the examples are applicable since extreme contrast changes don’t exactly work in film like it does in comics but there are still a few good tips that might apply. Many thanks to Joel Johnson for his generosity in sharing this classic comic reference work. Make sure to grab a copy of this in all it's hi-res glory on his blog.

13 Frames a day

2006-07-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

Do you have what it takes? What it takes is patience.

The San Diego Natural History Museum invited Ray Harryhausen to make a presentation during his trip here for the San Diego Comic-Con. They have an exhibit running called Dinosaurs : Reel and Robotic so it kind of fits with their theme. Ray was there with a long time friend who shared the stage with him and kind of MC'd for the evening.

The event was held in the museums' theatre where Ray showed his Tortoise and the Hare film. A short he started in the 50's and finished in 2002 with the help of Seamus Walsh and Mark Caballero. Ray talked a little about how the whole stop motion animation process works and shared some stories from his career. He then showed a highlight reel from his films and took questions from the audience.

The most surprising thing I learned was the extreme amount of patience Ray has. He mentioned that animating the skeleton fight sequence alone from Jason and the Argonauts took 4 months to film. Some days he only shot 13 frames of film. Yes that's right not even ONE second of animation for a whole days work. He didn't say but I am guessing that was a 10 hour day too. That scene still holds up today and is one of my favorite bits from his movies. This was all back in the days before frame grabbers, video assist etc., pretty amazing work.

Ray brought with him a skeleton from Jason and the small dino from Gwangi which still looked great and both puppets are still quite pose-able after all this time.
All in all it was a nice evening, Ray seemed to really enjoy the fans.

Doll or Puppet?

2006-07-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

Well sadly my Russian is non existent and I didn't want to try the babblefish thing. I found this nice site with some interesting puppets (dolls). There is some interesting flash animations as well. This stuff seems perfect for stop motion.  Click on the title above "Doll or Puppet?" to go to the page then after the Flash loads Click on the little guy with the bird cage to see the dolls. There's a great old world feel to the craftsmanship and style.

"The Brothers Twin"

2006-07-01T13:27:00.000-07:00

I have always enjoyed and been intrigued by Surrealist artwork, most people have seen Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” aka melting clocks and other Surrealist paintings. It was not until the careful viewing of “The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer” by the Brothers Quay that I looked further into their influences (they make it real easy)
If you are not a student of art history you may not realize that the whole Surrealist movement did not start in the art world at all. (I had no idea.) It is generally credited as being started by the French author and poet Andre Breton--Surrealism had its start in literature.

One of Breton’s mentors and friends actually coined the word and here is a quote from him:

“When a man tried to imitate walking he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg. He thus performed an act of Surrealism without realizing it.”
-- Guillaume Apollinaire

Moonguy

2006-06-28T22:36:00.000-07:00

This is a head sculpt for a character that has been around for a while now.
Green oil based clay with some photoshop eyes added.
His armature is about 3/4 of the way done, more pics to come.

Ready Steady GO!

2006-05-22T21:16:00.000-07:00

Is it time to jump on the blog band wagon? Or the band blog wagon? Maybe maybe not?

Mostly I started this to be able to post comments on some other blogs and have a really cool avatar - Ha!

Perhaps soon I will put up some artwork or stop motion animation stuff I have been working on.

But for now how about an interesting web site I have come across that I thought everyone might appreciate.

If it's creative, clever, original or fun then I dig it!

I ran across this web page by Jonathan J. Harris who may be one of the top

five Graphic Designers working on the web today.

Yes I know that is a pretty large statement to make.

But check some of the web sites he has developed.

Clean design, Great interface, Original, fun, Wow!

He is doing something that only works on the web.

Then check out some of the other stuff he has worked on like

VORN, or 10x10.

Whatever "it" is, this guy Jonathan has "IT" - lots of it.

And we could all use more of "IT" at least I know I could.

I say he is in the top 5 designers, and I don't even know who the other 4 could be.

But maybe that's just my sense of what good design is - you may not like it at all.

M.

PS really cool avatar to follow ... I hope.
sorry my ragged right text is out of control... widows everywhere
tsk, tsk, tsk