Type of digital way-background art to be made for Halfland's setsThe small daily act on making the physical set fell off about day 9 or so. I got tired and told myself I'd make it up the next day with a double portion. Then the next, and so on. I kept on full throttle, as I have been all these years, in terms of mental energy going towards the film, which is also important and fine, except it doesn't match the carnal labor of building in real life for getting things done.
What I've been doing is being in pain a lot, had to cancel everything last week in order to loll about and take pain meds, occasionally experiencing agonizing cramps and frozen shoulder joint pain. Grabbed Shari's kids King holiday for our annual Art Day here. Appointments, errands, housework before that. Graphic work looms in between everything with meetings, design hours, and presentations.
Concerning Halfland, I often feel like I've got creative spigot on 11 and the physical time tube it's supposed to fit through is only a size 2.
A few cool Halfland progress things to report in spite of the above, I found a book in a used book store called,
"Landscapes without Memory" by Joan Fontcuberta (Aperture, 2005). In it he used grayscale images of his body, ear, lines of hand, etc. (ok, even penis), as the terrain input for the marvelous free photo-realistic scenery generator,
Terragen™, created by Matt Fairclough. It's for Windows and the Mac OS, free for personal non-commercial use.
I'm currently asking around the web for information on how I might do this for the way-background creation for Halfland. I'll report back my progress on this. The landscapes in the book are interesting in that you wouldn't see them as body parts without knowing the origin, which interests me for Halfland. Not to be used straight and clear, obfuscated, blended with physical sets and digital atmospheres.
This, along with the Terragen concept has got my motors revving. UPDATE: Even before I came across the book above by happenstance, Rich Van Der Male of g3t Films sent me this incredible image by Mae e Filho (?) (which when I Google and translate means something in Portuguese? Not sure of the artist's name). In any case it's a WOW of an image. I love how you see the landscape FIRST and then the brain/sight shifts to see the Asian woman and child half (HA!) submerged! A very talented and kind Terragen expert has already written me to say he's got instruction for this technique ready to send to me tomorrow! W00t!
There's a POND for the Time Frog!! I didn't know that before! Yes, the stream will pool as it curves around the cottage, down a spell from the kitchen. There's where the frog will have his lilly leaves and attempt to snag a Musca Tempora (Time Flies) !
Going to make the table in the living area a half table (need the room anyway) and there'll be vine-shaped wire candlelier lights, the lanterns might be moth-wing shaped. And I'll be having a lot of fun making the crab cakes for the hermit crab as fancy decorated lemon layer cakes!
Triplets of Belleville and a story of Today's Self-Selection Culture
From the opening scene rendered in a great 1930 cartoon styleA few months ago a friend sent Paul and I the YouTube link to this clip from the
Triplets of Belleville. We hadn't seen the 2003 movie as we don't generally dig 2D animations and let it slide by. We loved this clip and Netflixed the dvd, couldn't get over how wonderful the film was, a devoted labor of obvious love on the inspired maker, Sylvain Chomet's part. His is a distinctive animation style, grotesque and dark, yet somehow he managed to get a lot of pathos, wit, and epic quirkiness into this piece. The integration between 2D, 3D, hand drawn and digital were all used seamlessly in service to the art. We loved it so much we bought our own copy. YouTube
>Netflix
>Amazon. Interesting.
Fun UPDATE: I was watching these clips and reading further and came across a treasure trove of 1930's cartoons on YouTube, what a world! This one, Opening Night (1933)
Nice squash and stretch like Justins! appears to be one of the influences for the opening scene in Bellevile, mas non?!