Lobsters walk on the ocean floor, but they can’t walk on land. Their spindly legs can’t support the weight of their heavy exoskeleton. I wanted a scene with a lobster walking on the beach, however, so I devised an insect-like walk that isn’t technically correct for a lobster but does the job. SO MANY LEGS. Not finished yet, but it’s coming along.
Animation
Animated films and the art form of animation.
Weeping Marys (work-in-progress)
I love liturgical art and, specifically, statues of weeping Madonnas, so it’s not surprising that this image has cropped up on my current project. Also, I just enjoy animating tears. You can be really loose with the drawing and it turns out pretty well.
This is the cleaned up footage, prior to digital paint. Below is one frame, painted.
Work-in-progress, January 2025.
At last, I’ve completed the interior room of the two towers. My plan is to reuse the design for both towers — one for the Moon, and the other for the Sun — but change the colour scheme. The Moon tower is an analogous mix of blues, pinks and purples with the accent colour of silver.
This character is loosely based on the High Priestess archetype from the Tarot.
Sacred Geometry
A rotating dodecahedron that I just completed for my current animation project. For Plato, the dodecahedron symbolised “Cosmic Harmony”. It is a three-dimensional representation of the symmetry of the pentagon and the “Golden Ratio”, that occurs organically throughout the natural world.
Jan Švankmajer & “The Ninth Heart”
I had the great pleasure of contributing some animation and artwork for the All The Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 box set from Severin Films. One of my contributions included an animated title sequence for a featurette on the fantasy-horror Czech film The Ninth Heart (original title Deváté srdce, 1979), directed by Juraj Herz. This film boasts an animated title sequence by stop-motion maestro Jan Švankmajer and his wife and frequent collaborator, artist Eva Švankmajerová. Their title sequence used a top-down, 2D stop-motion technique with articulated paper puppets. According to what I could find on the Internet (there’s very little written on this hidden gem), Eva painted all the backgrounds while Jan did the animation. In addition to a credit for “visual effects”, Jan Švankmajer is credited as the “artistic collaborator”, which suggests his involvement in the design of the marionette puppets seen throughout the film. The title sequence and the marionettes are very much in a naïve, folk art style that one would expect from an independent travelling puppeteer (one of the main characters).
My title sequence adopts this folk art style and references both the Švankmajer animated title sequence, the marionettes, and also some of the main characters in the film.
The image below is a screen grab from the Švankmajer title sequence.
The (Im)mortal Lobster
I wasn’t expecting a lobster to emerge as the main protagonist of my latest animation The Music of the Spheres, but there you have it. Also, lobsters are rather fun to draw.
Fun fact: it was once believed that lobsters were “biologically immortal”, meaning that they regenerate throughout their lives rather than die. This isn’t true, though they can be very long-lived. (There are jellyfish that are biologically immortal, however).
This scene — and by expansion, the film — is inspired by the traditional iconography of the moon card from the Tarot. A card from the Major Arcana, the moon card typically includes imagery of a full or crescent moon, two towers flanking a body of water, a dog, a wolf, and a crayfish. Not all versions of the moon card in the various (and numerous) Tarot decks include all of this iconography. Many edit out the dog and wolf, but include the crayfish.
“The card depicts a night scene, where two large pillars are shown. A wolf and a domesticated dog howl at the Moon while a crayfish emerges from the water. […] According to A.E. Waite’s 1911 book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, “The card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit… The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it… The intellectual light is a reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery which it cannot reveal.” Additionally, “It illuminates our animal nature” and according to Waite, “the message is ‘Peace, be still; and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up a form.’” — from Wikipedia.
Scenes 1 & 2, complete…maybe.
Happy with the rotoscoped animation. Debating changing the star field background. Even though I’m drip-feeding my footage for this project — something I swore I wouldn’t do — I actually find it interesting to document the various stages and changes made during the creative process. There’s a lot of back-and-forth and, if you’re not questioning your decisions, then perhaps there’s no opportunity for growth.
Anyway, glad to have completed the digital painting on the rotoscoped animation on Scene 2 just prior to the start of the school term. This project will get shelved until the term quiets down.
UPDATE:
Decided to try out another digital star field in After Effects, and I’m happy with this one. Looks more subtle than the previous background.
All The Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 box set
Last summer, I had the great pleasure of contributing some animation and artwork for the All The Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 box set from Severin Films. My contributions include a paper puppet theatre, and an animated title sequence for a featurette on the beautifully restored dark fantasy film The Ninth Heart, directed by Juraj Herz. This Czech film boasts an animated sequence by stop-motion maestro Jan Švankmajer and his wife and frequent collaborator, artist Eva Švankmajerová. Their title sequence used a top-down, 2D stop-motion technique with articulated paper puppets, a technique to which my sequence pays humble homage.
This box set looks INCREDIBLE. Many thanks to Kier-La Janisse for enlisting me in this dream commission.
Work-in-progress, July 2024.
How’s your summer going? I’ve been rotoscoping the first two scenes of my latest animation. Due to all the folds in this costume, I typically manage only 1-2 frames per day. Fortunately, for the sake of my sanity, most of this project will not be rotoscoped. I wanted a certain look in the first three scenes, however, and for that it had to be rotoscoped.
Making moon morphs
Quick studio update. As the winter term slowly begins to wind down, I’ve stolen a few moments to work on my Music of the Spheres storyboard. Even though the board is not yet complete, I decided to try out a complex morph for an image that will appear in the film. I think I’m happy with this. Have tried adding a boil to the static moments using the turbulence effect in After Effects and I’m not entirely convinced by it. Further explorations are needed.
Lady Lazarus 