Canadian film

Hermit crabs with plastic shells

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Two more scenes to go until my animation project is complete. Here’s a sneak peek at what I’m currently working on. The backgrounds are painted thus far, but not the crab.

Did you know that hermit crabs are not “true crabs”, since they don’t possess a hard exoskeleton? They need to scavenge cast-off sea snail shells to protect their soft, vulnerable abdomens. Unfortunately, with people removing shells from beaches around the world for souvenirs, hermit crabs are left with little choice but to use plastic garbage as substitutions for shells.

Work-in-progress, July 2024.

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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

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5-second morph of the moon into a man-on-the-moon face.

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.

Festival updates for “Ouroboros”

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I recently enjoyed a trip to Chicago to take in the city (had never visited before) and the Chicago Underground Film Festival, a punk-infused festival of independent filmmaking that I highly recommend. I also highly recommend Chicago. It’s like New York’s scrappy little Midwest cousin who’s tough-as-nails but unexpectedly polite and friendly. Good food, too.

My short film Ouroboros continues its festival run November 5th, 2023 with the Edinburgh Short Film Festival. Sadly, no trip to Edinburgh planned (this time).

Ouroboros (2023)

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Ouroboros spins a loose narrative of joy, grief, death and rebirth, all told through looping images printed on physical animation devices known as phonotropes. Much like the ouroboros, a symbolic snake that devours its own tail, everything in life is a loop.

This short film captures my ongoing fascination with physical animation devices known as phonotropes — a contemporary update on the 19th-century pre-cinema device, the zoetrope — which uses a record turntable and a video camera to capture the magic of the animated loops. Created during the various pandemic lockdowns and shot entirely on my smartphone, this short film visualizes perpetual cycles of beginnings, endings, and the inevitable reset of the loop.

AWARDS:

Best North American Animation, Female Eye Film Festival 2023.(https://thehollywoodtimes.today/awards-torontos-female-eye-film-festival-2023/)

Directed & animated by Jennifer Linton
Music by Zev Farber

©2023 Papercut Pictures. All rights reserved.

OUROBOROS at the Chicago Underground Film Festival 2023

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Delighted to announce that Ouroboros will have its North American premiere at the 30th incarnation of the Chicago Underground Film Festival this coming September. CUFF is a fantastic festival with a solid vision for all things odd and off-beat. Here’s the blurb from their web site that best describes their mandate: ““Underground” isn’t always easy to define. At its core, it’s a fluid, inclusive, forward-thinking concept that has fueled movements and counter-culture revolutions over time. Chicago Underground Film Festival is no different. At our core, we welcome visionaries, activists and creatives, and are proud to be the longest running incubator of the avant-garde, the controversial, the cutting edge, and the transformational.”

OUROBOROS screening at Oberhausen, April 28th, 2023.

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Delighted to have ‘Ouroboros’ included in the Distributors’ Screening from Vtape & CFMDC at the 69th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. The distributors’ screenings are out-of-competition screenings where “12 international distributors of artist and avant-garde films present selections from their current catalogues”. Screening will be Friday 28 April 2023; 19:45. Thank you to Vtape in Toronto for including my film in this program.