Animation Inspiration: Ernie Fosselius
"Mental Floss" Automata, photographed by Mark Frauenfelder, via Flickr
I just swung past Phil Dale's Fund My Short site where he gives a big hint about his plans for his newest animation short, Henry and Martha. It sounds great. He also shares an interview (sourced from the one day of Rocket Boom I missed) that features a great interview with filmmaker/animator/automata maker, Ernie Fosselius. I dare you to watch how this guy works and not be inspired to get into your workshops.
Excerpt from his wiki page:
"Fosselius' film career began in the early 1970Â’s when he co-created 20 original animated films for Sesame Street, he's best known for his classic Star Wars parody Hardware Wars. ...In recent years, Fosselius has retired from filmmaking and has taken to whittling mechanically animated carved caricatures and automata which he displays in traveling galleries called the "Marvelous Mechalodeon" and the "Crankabout Mechanical Theater", an entirely human powered exhibit."
Thanks for the link Shelley, fun stuff, it does make me want to go into the shop and start making something.
ReplyDeleteI TOLD you!!! Something about it is inspiring and creative, er, creatively inspiring? Yeah, go build!
ReplyDeleteI'd like to add a big welcome to several new visitors from South America (Ale, you've got some company now!) and three more from Australia (!), as well as several more from the US and Canada!
ReplyDeleteMore action soon!
I have been an enormous fan of Ernie Fosselius storytelling for a few centuries now - but have never been fortunate enough to see his carved caricatures or automata - do you have any idea either where they can be seen - or how a person can get in touch with Ernie? It would be a treat to see more of his recent work!
ReplyDeleteHello, Miguel. Gosh, no, I have zero idea how one might reach out to Mr. Fosselius. I had no recollection of this post mentioning him until you commented. Thank you for calling my attention to him again. His publicly available Wikipedia page says that he is now 80 years of age and living in California. I see there is an interview with him from Make Magazine posted here:
Deletehttp://makezine.com/08/made_fossel/
A longer interview here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20081013234032/http://makezine.com/08/made_fossel/
And he has no website per the last paragraph from the above:
Fosselius doesn't have a website (I'm told he hands out flyers and postcards that say "Analog Website" on them), but there's more fun history on his Wikipedia page. You can also see his sculptures in action in the Heavenly States' "Car Wash" video.
Everything about him on YouTube seems to be between 12 and 20 years old, unfortunately.