“Toronto Alice” is a popular girl, indeed.

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Toronto Alice has become a very popular girl, indeed. She’s received some love from the Toronto Film Scene blog, from the Canadian Animation Resources blog, and from the fun-loving culture-geeks at Boing Boing!

Many, many heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to my Toronto Alice campaign! In just twelve days, we’ve not only met my goal of $3,000, but surpassed it! If you’d like to get in on the “perks”, there’s still time to do so. You can get a private Vimeo link or Blu-Ray DVD of the completed film, Toronto Alice paper dolls and/or original artwork. This film won’t be released to the general public until after its run in the festival circuit, so this will be your only opportunity to see it till then.

Toronto Alice Indiegogo campaign.

Indiegogo Campaign for Toronto Alice

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/toronto-alice/x/6519608

  • Are you a fan of the funny — and slightly creepy — animations of Terry Gilliam? Or perhaps you’re more of a devotee of Surrealist animation from Poland? Or maybe you just enjoy weird, off-the-beaten-path stuff? If you answered “yes” to any of these (or, like me, to all three), then you’ll probably enjoy the unique style of cutout animation I create at Papercut Pictures.
  • My name is Jennifer Linton, and Papercut Pictures is my production company. I’m an interdisciplinary visual artist working with animation, installation, drawing and printmaking. I have exhibited my art for the past 20 years in galleries across Canada, and internationally with exhibitions in the U.S. and Italy. My animated films have screened at festivals such as Animaldiçoados Film Festival 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Toronto Animated Image Society (TAIS) Showcase 2013, and the Boston Underground Film Festival 2014. I’ve received numerous awards and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
  • This campaign is to raise funds for my next animation project, entitled Toronto Alice. The character of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s famous children’s novels is transported to contemporary Toronto where, like many native Torontonians, she takes a ride on the streetcar. As with many trips on the public transit, she encounters a succession of strange characters who engage her in (equally strange) conversations. The dialogue is borrowed directly from Through the Looking-Glass, but given a fresh & funny new twist in this stop-motion animation.

What We Need & What You Get

  • I will create all of the visuals for this film: the artwork, the puppets, and the backgrounds. I will also handle all of the stop-motion animation. What I need help with is the audio component — and that’s where YOU come in!
  • I need three separate audio components for this project: musical treatments, ambient background sound fx, and voice actors. While I can handle all the visual stuff, I need to call in the professionals to create good quality recordings of ambient sound. Animation takes a great deal of effort and a very long time to create, so you don’t want great visuals to be undermined by inferior audio.
  • Listening to my voiceover in the pitch video should prove, without a doubt, that I should never, ever do voiceover work! Your contributions will allow me to leave this important task to the professionals!
  • I’m offering a range of “perks” to sweeten the deal, from DVDs to paper dolls to original, framed artwork! It’s win-win! You help me make this project the best it can be AND you get limited edition art in return!

Why contribute?

  • You’re a fan of animation. Specifically, you enjoy independent animation that advances the art form, or that simply stands out as different from everything else. There aren’t many animators out there working with paper cutouts and stop-motion. What I do is very boutique and kinda retro. Different is good.
  • You’re Canadian, or you have an uncle who lives in Canada (hey, maybe I know him). No, seriously. It’s good to see your own stories up there on the (big or small) screen. We gotta represent. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wanted to see Alice wearing a Hudson’s Bay coat.
  • You’re a fan of Lewis Carroll and his Alice novels. There’s a timelessness and universality about Carroll’s characters that allow us to visit and revisit this wonderful material. Young and old, we all love to slip into Wonderland.
  •  You want that swag. A custom Toronto Alice jointed paper doll? Sweet.

Other Ways You Can Help

Spread the word!

  • Like what you see? Help get the word out by using the Indiegogo share tools! It’s good karma.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/705357/wdgi/6519608

“Blueprints”, group show at Centre 3

Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts

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My installation The Disobedient Dollhouse will be featured in the curated group show Blueprints at Hamilton’s  Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts. This exhibition will also screen my two recent animated videos Domestikia: The Incident in the Nursery and Domestikia, Chapter 3, La Petite Mort. Show runs from January 17 – March 1, 2014. The opening reception will take place Friday, February 14 at 7 – 10 p.m.

Lady Lazarus’s 2013 in review!

Was Jayne Mansfield a satanist? That, amongst other burning questions, is what drove the most traffic to my blog over 2013. View all the details in the 2013 annual report for this blog.

[For those of you not familiar with my blog, I don’t typically write on such heady topics as “was Jayne Mansfield a satanist?”. My blog features examples of my artwork from the past several years, as well as my musings about visual art and horror cinema, with a focus on art and film that evokes the bizarre, macabre and/or uncanny.]

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 47,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 17 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

VideoArt.net Selection of the Month (October)

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My stop-motion animation Domestikia, Chapter 3: La Petit Mort is one of the Selections of the Month (October 2013) at Videoart.net, an international curated video-sharing network for video artists and experimental filmmakers: http://vlog.videoart.net/jennifer-linton-domestikia-chapter-3-la-petite-mort/

Founded in 2005, Videoart.net quickly positioned itself as the most popular video art and experimental film website in the world. Videoart.net attracts both art and film industry professionals by providing a gateway to an international network with a dynamic online curatorial community. By carefully curating thousands of video artworks by hundreds of artists all over the world, Videoart.net prides itself in providing the most rousing, thought-provoking, unprecedented, and significant works in film and video currently being produced. — from VideoArt.net web site.

Domestikia, Chapter 3: La Petite Mort

A tale of love, betrayal and one vengeful butterfly. This project was inspired by the surreal animations of Lenica, Borowyck and Svankmajer, Japanese tentacle erotica, and those strange, middle-of-the-night dreams one has after spicy food.

Story, artwork and articulated paper puppets created by Jennifer Linton.
Stop-motion animation by Carla Veldman.
Original musical score by Zev Farber.
Directed & edited by Jennifer Linton.

This animation was made possible by the financial support of the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council. Copyright ©2013 Papercut Pictures (Jennifer Linton). All rights reserved.