It came from the mold...

Stop motion today was super exciting. We started to take the puppets out of our molds. They're a platinum-based silicon that we injected into our plaster molds last week. Because the silicon is so goopy, it tends to overflow the actual puppet shape and ooze into the flange (the flat bits) of the plaster mold, which ultimately results in creepy see-through style bat wigs.

So creeeeeeepy!

It moves!

Hey there loyal blog-readers,

October is speeding by, and it finally feels like autumn in NY. With Halloween less than two weeks away and the semester nearly two months over, things are getting pretty busy.

Second year at SVA is considerably different than first year. First year was very assignment oriented, with lots of little projects. This year, however, we're all hard at work on our thesis projects, which are designed to be much more self-motivated. This week we each had to give a presentation explaining our thoughts and ideas about our projects, so I have a long post about my thesis nearly ready for you. Soon to come, scouts honor.

In the meantime, however, I thought I would show you what I've been doing in the world of digital illustration. This year, we engineered a new class on the "digital book", all about how digital media can serve the book format, how books can be adapted for digital media, and how something entirely new can be created. I don't believe that we will ever lose the book as an object and a format (I hope, I hope), and as an avid reader, I do prefer holding a physical book rather than using an e-reader. That being said, new technology like the ipad, tablets, and iphones can be adapted for really exciting, interactive reading experiences, especially for kids.

In the class, we've been learning how to create interactive animations that could serve as illustrations for a digital book. Each of us chose an already existing story to play around with, and I've been working with the Wizard of Oz.

I've been playing with a scene of the scarecrow in the field and have just (huzzah!) gotten my scarecrow to swing his arms and legs. The crow perched on the scarecrow's post now flaps his wings and nods his head, and each time you click on him, another crow appears in the air. The clouds in the background are also interactive; if you click on them, they scuttle across the sky. I'm not yet sure how to post an interactive animation, so for the moment, you'll have to make do with a couple of stills. It's really exciting and suuuuper nerdy because the animation is all done with code in flash. It's a bit like learning a foreign language but with a bunch of logic and math thrown in. But, I digress... so on to the project:

Main scene:

Clicking the crow to add more crows:

Clicking the clouds to make them move:

Sneak preview

Hello my poor dear ignored readers. It has been a rather busy spring, and while I have quite a bit of new work, I haven't yet scanned and merged the images yet. By merge, I mean that my paintings are actually too big for the scanner, so part of my process involves scanning them in sections and then compositing them in the computer. It's not terribly difficult but is admittedly time consuming. This week I'm going to set up shop at one of the scanners in the studio and spend a day getting all of my images into the computer... at which point, I will of course share aaaall of the new work with you.

Until then, however, I have a small consolation prize. In addition to my enormous monster book project, I've been redesigning my website, doing more html whatnot, and starting to learn flash animation. Wooo! In doing all of that, I've been designing a site with embedded bits flash animations.

So for all of you lovely people, an itty bitty sneak peak of a flash animated painting.

Short and Sweet

Apologies for the mammoth type posts of late. I know they've gotten rather out of hand, but I have all of this catching up to do!

Regardless, I thought I'd keep it short and sweet tonight. In my last post, I mentioned that I put some of Carl's experimenting to work and used a wax-board for a project for my digital class. The assignment was wiiiiide open: a 6x6 image with the theme of transport. Period.

This is what I came up with:

This was actually a two part project. On our second round with the image, we learned some basic photoshop animation!

Tada!