I just finished Plasticland, a stop motion animation that took a year to complete.
I made an informative “behind the scenes” video for my Patreon subscribers, if you are interested. Here are a few more details:
I spent at least 6 days filming in my yard (over 4 seasons), with each day comprising 4-6 hours of shooting.
The monster sound of the egg spider came from a neighbor’s dog. I tried to remove the spaces between his barks to make a long RrrRrrrrRRRrraaawwww sound.
My buddy Dusten provided some shortwave radio sounds, which can be heard when the astronaut gets back up on the wall. Thanks, Dusten!
There are real “Brood X” cicadas in the grass during the opening shots, as they were just starting to show up in my neighborhood.
I originally pitched this idea for a silent film festival in Denver. The declined my proposal, and asked me to make “Brood X” instead.
Here’s a bit of a WIP, where I tried a screen test in the Theoretical Audio Lab. I’ve been fooling around with animating photos in the studio to have as a visual accompaniment. Promising!
And just look at the crazy drums I’ve been using.
I’ve been scouring reverb and ebay for very cheap, MIJ (made in Japan), no name blue sparkle drums. That’s what Dad and I had when I was a kid. Back then, I felt somewhat “less than,” when I compared my drums to my school acquaintances’ Lugwig, Rodgers and Tama drum sets. These days, however, I take great pleasure in using these drums.
The tom features a hook mount, and I’m 99% sure it’s identical to the drums we had in the 70’s. Tuning is a little bit of an issue, but I think it sounds pretty good. That floor tom is missing the bottom hoop and lugs – not a problem for now, but I’ll try and find one. The snare, however, is the real treasure. There is no latch to disengage the snare, which is old, wanky, and stretched out. There’s a nob that doesn’t turn. The drum head indicates many, many hours of use, so I think this baby was well loved.
It’s a little bit of a project, reassembling my shitty childhood kit. I’ll use the shit kit this spring snd summer!
This has been a nice, long walk to get here. Here being the beginning of a project from which I’ve been assembling materials and ideas throughout the pandemic.
I made a joke to myself a while back that goes “if you don’t have someone to play with, play with yourself.” And then I laughed to myself. And so, I’ve created the Theoretical Audio Laboratory in which to conduct my experiments. Sound Experiments (SEx)! And even Song Experiments.
This is turning out to be quite a hoot. Stay tuned. Or, detuned. Please stay!
It has been a very windy week in the neighborhood. I’ve been compelled to record the wind with my phone, and finally decided to animate something in an Altoids tin. This is a quick one. I wanted to do a camera test and play with the layers and light. I say it was a quick one, but it took a week to get this, after several false starts and abandoned takes.
Thanks for looking at this. I plan to do more elaborate attempts next.
I am happy to present my latest animation, The Benefits of Radiation. It’s the backstory for some of my action figures.
The story takes place in a Baltimore bar called Roshambos. You’ll figure the rest out if you watch the video above.
I’m happy with how this turned out. I’ve spent more time on this than anything I’ve completed to date. Time, both in terms of the hours it took to make, and also from the time I that had the idea for the story, up to this evening.
I drew each frame on a light box and used about a ream of paper.
I finally found a use for Space Dust, too.
I enjoyed doing the foley for this. I enjoyed getting to know some of the characters. Perhaps you will enjoy this.
In any event, please please please… Enjoy Radiation Responsibly!
Everything in this came from a library. The cutouts and text are from 1960’s copies of College & University Business journal advertisements. I like the subliminal, did-that-just-say-something feel of this, especially as it progresses. Put a bunch of random elements together and see what surfaces.
I captured the audio with my phone – everything came from the library except the piano, which is in my garage. Maybe I’ll do another edit where I swap the piano for library sounds.
I’ve been processing sound files to create a foundation for animation. I’m building on last year’s work around incongruent foley and non-diagetic sound. I’m starting with sound, and then seeing what animation shows up for me based on what I’m hearing.
This post is about some of the devices I’m using to accomplish this. I find inspiration in them, and maybe you will, too.
Years ago, I accumulated and compiled a lot of “found sounds” with a portable mini-disc set up. I used to carry one around, along with a pair of Shure SM-58 microphones, and record stuff. This is before iPhones. The sound on the Mini-Disc is really great, but it’s impossible for me to get the source files off of the proprietary hardware, other than through the headphone jacks. That’s pretty shitballs, but, whatever. I’ve never been much more than a lofi fellow, anyway.
In addition to the many hours of weird stuff from the mini-discs, I dug up some old cassette players.
Now, Lookit this beaut! It has four stereo outputs, which means I can use it to send a signal to four different processors/amps/whatever. I call it the Bell & Howler.
Additionally, I’ve enjoyed using Red Panda’s Particle to add a little English to the tapes. You can hear this in the video below.
I’m also a big fan of Red Panda’s Tensor, which is like a tape loop machine with a hyperdrive.
My buddy Jack Livingston was in Colorado in the late 1970’s, and he attended a series of workshops hosted by Beatnik poet, Allen Ginsberg. We share a love for Beat culture and writing, and Jack loaned me some recordings from those sessions. I’m going to use some of this in an upcoming, literary inspired animation.
Thrift stores are FULL of odd old tapes, there’s no shortage of material to be found on them. These are great for making short loops.
Finally, I use my iPhone to capture stuff all the time. Using handful of devices in this article, there are endless possibilities for making compelling audio tracks and foley.
I’ll explore how the sounds themselves can inform the visuals for animation in an upcoming post.
I stumbled on these old books at work. They’ve been removed from circulation, and I found this whole scene to be inspiring. I took a few – they called out to be repurposed. Objects like Altoids tins and spoons sometimes do that to me.
The audio for this piece is a collection of clips I’ve accumulated from field recordings, old tapes and found sound (literally sounds that I found somewhere and edited).
I hear each different section as though it’s a visual background to a comic panel, and that’s where the inspiration for the animation comes from.
The audio below will likely change and evolve, especially around the rhythm component. But here’s the working draft so far:
My daughter and I made some contact mics, and spent an evening recording sounds in the basement of my studio. I ordered the piezo discs from amazon, and then spliced them to 1/4″ guitar cables.
We took turns recording various objects. I’ve developed a library of interesting sounds from these activities, that I can use as foley and sound effects in my animation.
This animation is on a scroll of paper that I purchased from IKEA. I’ve been making scrolls on this stuff since 2008. I really love working this way – on scrolls, I mean. I’ve always thought animation and scrolls are intertwined.
This was my first attempt, but I chanced my mind and decided to work in the opposite direction (to go down instead of up, from this point of view). I got to seven seconds of footage, which is 168 frames, before I abandoned this one.
The above photo shows me wrapping up this scene. It was about 8 hours of work.
Below, the final scroll.
It’s worth mentioning – and, really essential that I explain – that the music in this was the starting point of this animation. In fact, every animation that I’ve produced this year (12? 14?) began with some audio that I authored. This was recorded with a Moog, and I love it. I hope you do, too!
