animation

Indiegogo Campaign for Toronto Alice

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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

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Documentation of my work in the group show “Blueprints” At Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts, Hamilton.
Documentation of my work in the group show “Blueprints” At Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts, Hamilton.
Documentation of my work in the group show “Blueprints” At Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts, Hamilton.
Documentation of my work in the group show “Blueprints” At Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts, Hamilton.

Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts

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blueprints

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.

Domestikia, Chapter 3: La Petite Mort

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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.

Life is hard, but animation is harder.

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Hello gentle readers. It’s been over a month since I last wrote in this blog, and I felt that I should share with you what has been preoccupying my time. As some of you may know, I’ve been working in the medium of stop-motion animation these past few months. Animation has a tendency to devour time like a hungry little baby, and my new animation is a greedy baby, indeed. Now, before I get too ahead of myself, allow me to backtrack a bit.

Back in October, I lamented over the large amount of time and effort required to properly prepare a media artist grant application. I wrote that “[the grant application] is a long, tedious, and painful process that I submit to only grudgingly.” However, as the old axiom goes “you get out of life what you put in”, and this past exercise in painful tedium was no exception to this rule. I received both media artist grants to which I applied. There’s a reason why old axioms are old: they’re generally true.

Above is a “quick & dirty” test I worked on today for one of my new paper puppets. And by “quick”, I mean that it took me several hours to produce those 7 seconds. This is a rough, and by no means a finished work. Lots of pop and flicker in the lights. There is no audio.

King Street Alternative Film & Video Festival, February 8-9, 2013.

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Video still from "Domestikia: The Incident in the Nursery" by jennifer Linton, 2:01 minutes, 2012.

Video still from “Domestikia: The Incident in the Nursery” by Jennifer Linton, 2:01 minutes, 2012.

My short animated film Domestikia: The Incident in the Nursery will be screened next month during the 2nd Winter edition of the King Street Alternative Film & Video Festival. According to the festival’s blog, they’ve programmed over 35 films & videos over the 8th and 9th of February (2013), ranging from the very short to over 20-minutes in length. The event is held at Betty’s, that stalwart Corktown staple located directly across from the Toronto Sun building on an otherwise desolate stretch of King Street East. The beer and nachos at Betty’s are glorious, and the evening should prove fun and entertaining. Come on out and support your local, indie filmmakers!

Animaldiçoados/Animacursed 2012

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Film still from “Domestikia: The Incident in the Nursery”, 2012, stop-motion animation done with paper cutouts and puppets.

It’s official. My animated short film Domestikia: The Incident in the Nursery has been selected under the International category for Animaldiçoados/Animacursed 2012, a film festival in Rio de Janeiro that features horror, suspense, and “other cursed” genres of animation. Mine is probably under the “other cursed” or possibly the “WTF” category, should they have one of those.

Visit the festival web site (in Portuguese, of course) and check out the selected films. Pretty solid programming! Amazingly enough, I’m sharing screen time with Julia Pott (see my last blog entry When I grow up, I want to make films like Julia). Not sure how that happened.