Leaf-Olympics: Day 10--Full Can-o-Peas!

Everyday during the Leaf-Olympics, Paul would come home from work and we'd laugh because I had been adding leaves to the tree ALL DAY and it didn't look any different than when he'd left. Ah, but now it's done and the work does show when compared and contrasted with the beginning stages. I'm very happy with the result and feel it strikes the right tone of real and hand-made for this film and its world.

It was awkward getting the placement right the last few days. Putting a few sprouts on was easy peasy at first and then became a whole nuther challenge as the branches got full. I resorted today to marking the spots where leaves should grow with blue tape while stepping back away from the tree and then using those as guides when I climbed up close with the glue gun. I actually had to rearrange a few of the leaves placed early on as my choices got more natural looking.

Now, at this point, anymore leaves would be too much, I'm happy to say. ALL leaves are "placed" with hot glue. I forgot in my hurry to move on that I still have to cement the joins of each stem to *finish* the tree. I can't rightly tell how time intensive or easy that step will go until I start at it next week. Hoping it will be quicker than I'm thinking it might be.

In the meantime, I turn my attention to finishing the cottage walls, inside and out, laying down the hardwood plank flooring, and maybe a little roughing in of cardboard set pieces for the surrounding landscape. Speaking of which...

For a preview/pre-viz of what I'd like the distant view to be through the cottage windows, we need look no further than the illustration on my dinner of canned beef stew last night... The view art seen above was taken from a photo of the actual stew label. I love it for the distant view--it's perfect. I'll be looking to recreate this effect precisely.


Before and after, see how it happened! For a slideshow of the Answer Tree growing up take a look here (Please let slideshow images load a minute before viewing.)

Comments

  1. great images!!

    jriggity

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  2. oh, i love the slideshow!

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  3. My god!!!! Everything is looking AWESOME!!!!!

    I'm especially diggin' the interior cottage shot - so textural and form-tastic!

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  4. Thanks, gl-sters!

    And Mike, anytime I can get you to say, "My god!!!!" --I'm deliriously happy!!

    Thank you so much for the boost of kind words!

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  5. Anonymous10:59 PM

    A grand conclusion to your arborial foliation adventure!
    Also,
    I really like how you capped those acorns. Absolutely agree, doesn't mattter if there are bare-headed acorns out there, those little nuts need to SAY acorn, and now they do.
    Cottage interior's coming along too.

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  6. Right on, Mr. H!

    All things in Halfland are capped off nicely, Sir!

    When you say to trust one's instincts in these cases, I believe it and get fortified by the thought! Thank you.

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  7. Anonymous5:08 PM

    Hey,

    Just blowing by to give your blog love.

    {{{{{{{{{{{hugs the Notes from Halfland}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

    By the way, if you want to get a film look with a video camera, or digital still DSLR or point and shoot, you can get a diffusion filter for it through Amazon, and it takes the hard edges off of video and makes it soft and timeless.

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  8. Hey Pramsters, THANKS! Thanks for mentioning how to get the film look. I noticed I dug the distortion Mike's web cam got the other day. Hmmm, weird lenses anyone!

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  9. Hi Shelley, thanks a lot for the great posts! I am new to stopmotion and have been building the set of my first film lately. The building process of your answer tree helped me a lot. I have just finished the tree for my film and posted process to my blog: yazmotion.wordpress.com I mentioned about your blog and linked to these pages. I wanted to let you know and thank you :)

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  10. YAZ!!! You darling!!! I LOVE YOUR TREE! Holy Cow!!! I'm thrilled, thrilled I tell you! You made great use of the posts here and I couldn't be more chuffed!

    I'll be following your work now, thanks so much for letting me know about it! WOO HOO!

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  11. Shelley... my tree TEACHER!!! Thank you very much. It is very important for me to receive your positive feedback. I have been following your blog for a while and you are definetely a very very creative artist. Everything look really awesome here and I cant wait to see your movie completed. I tell about your movie to all of my friends here who are interested in the stopmo film I am working on. So, you are pretty famous here :) Also thank you very much for adding my blog's URL to your stopmo friends list. I appreciate!!

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  12. Hooray! Yaz, I am so thrilled to hear this. I'm famous in Turkey! I have always had a special connection to your part of the world. I have a special love for it. My mother was living in Turkey as a teenager and somehow it all came through her blood into me.

    I can't wait to see what you do next on your project!

    GOGOGOGO!

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  13. Shelley, vaowwwww your mother lived in Turkey... Which part of Turkey did she live? You also come here when you get a chance. We would be very happy to host you and your family here. We are living in a small beautiful town on the shore of aegean sea.

    Take good care of yourself and Halfland!

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  14. oooo. I don't know what part, I'll have to ask her. He father was there making documentary films for the US government. He took the whole family with him, his wife and 5 kids, my mother the eldest at 17.

    My grandmother, an artist and fashion designer, had a very Turkish ethnic style after living in the Middle East. She even had a custom dress shop in the 60's called "Ethnics".

    I can't explain how I feel so close to Turkey and Turkish ways, maybe I just have a Turkish soul somehow.

    Your town sounds gorgeous (Googled Turkish Riviera a little). I can't even imagine how lovely it must be there. If I traveled, you bet I'd love to visit!

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  15. Do you still have the films that your grandfather made in Turkey? They were here the whole family... Thats amazing. They could have lived in Istanbul and shot in different places in Turkey I guess. And your grandmother was an artist, fashion designer... -no wonder where you got your talent from :)- It must be wonderfull listening their memories.

    We live in Bodrum. If you google for Bodrum Turkey, can see some pictures. We used to live in Istanbul,.. big big crowded city. We moved here 4 years ago.

    I lived in USA for a year in 94-95. In pittsburgh and youngstown. Guess what I was doing.. babysitting :))

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  16. Hi Yaz, nope, I never even saw much of my grandfather or anything he ever made. My family is very weird on all sides. I wouldn't even call it a family at all. More like a temporary troop of creative savages that would slash each other for a bit of meat.

    My grandmother is barely alive in a care facility somewhere, sedated because she was causing too much trouble so I hear.

    She's always been at once creatively stimulating and emotionally destructive to talk to. So, I've stayed away after I've grown up.

    As a child though I did live with her for a bit and absorbed a profound artistic sensibility from her. It's bloomed with me all my life. I hope I took the good part of it and left the bad behind. I'm grateful for it.

    I will Google Bodrum, thank you.

    Babysitting, eh? They were lucky to have you.

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  17. Oh I am sorry to hear that. But I think coming from a family like that means a lot of independance. You dont have to care about them. In Turkey we have these traditional very closed families. Where everybody expects you to do something... Visit them, call them, be nice to them just because you are a family not because you like them...

    Babysitting... I was a very good nany but I decided to not to have kids at least for the next 10 years :)) and I did... Man it was hard taking care of someone elses baby... But at the same time, the time I spent in USA was one of the most beautiful years in my life with all my friends, people I met.

    Ok, we are going out of scope here :)) Back to stopmotion..

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  18. hee hee, I agree with you on all points!

    xoxox

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