Christmas Card I Write...

This was the first year I decided to tackle the elusive 'Christmas Card'. I've made individual ones before for significant others and family before but had never branched out. This year, an idea came to me and I decided to run with it.


The concept: a quiet night in the museum. A tree stands out-of-place amongst the still forms. I have a peculiar love of taxidermy, dioramas and, as logic follows, Natural History Museums. I am not, however, a train-o-phile. That obsession must have skipped a generation.

A few folks (my mom, basically) thought I snapped a shot of a diorama at the AMNH and Photoshop'd in the tree. Here's some pictures to see what went in to my first official Christmas card and set the record straight...


The lions were bought at one of the only Toys 'R Us still in business. It took a whole day of driving around Brooklyn and Queens to find it (yes, I know... there's one in Times Square but I didn't want to trek all the way into Manhattan especially with the car).


I spent a long time at the Toys 'R Us deciding what animals to use. The lions came in a 'family pack' and the cub offered a nice pose in relation to the tree.


The Savannah tree was cut from a fallen branch pilfered off some church's yard in Red Bank, NJ. The tall grass, faux rocks and yellow 'earth' were purchased at various art/hobby shops.


The center-piece was bought from Ace Hardware through Amazon.com. For all my worrying that it wouldn't arrive in time it was the least stressful part of the project. It came already wired with lights and a battery pack, all I had to do was saw off some of the base to help it fit.


I cut and stained the wood and those pillars are a paper towel tube cut in half and painted. The floor texture and background 'painting' are images found off teh internets and printed at Staples.

And for anyone looking to build their own dioramas, I found this user's Youtube videos extremely helpful as is his website, www.stormthecastle.com.

Needle Pulling Thread

Whenever I come across a dress or top I want but can't have, I tell myself "I could make that." Sometimes, I'll actually go so far as to buy fabric and think about a pattern.

The mantra "I could make that" isn't completely unfounded. I know how to sew, understand how certain fabrics work and can sort of operate a sewing machine. In college, I even made this -


So last night I decided to actually put a little effort into seeing one of these whims to its conclusion.


Here's the sketch with measurements and start of a dress pattern. With some luck, I'll be able to have a dress that looks vaguely like Debbie Harry's in Blondie's Heart of Glass video.


And with cats helping, I'll definitely have it ready in time for my friend's wedding in April.


Unfortunately I was too tired to remember to take a photo of the final cut dress pattern. I'll see what I can do about this in the future.

Deboning...

The Handsome Family video has been progressing, or, if you prefer Darwin to Baron d'Holbach, evolving nicely.


Thanks to Asterisk, I got to scan and color in the final group of character designs last night (I've been without a scanner since almost February now).

With that out of the way, it's time to move onto the fun part (at least for me). While Chris starts sketching out boards, I'll be launching into the actual puppet construction. So, as I use to say to my Elementary School students, ikimashou!

I begin by making the armature. It seems like a no-brainer, really but I figured it was a good thing to mention. If you don't start with the armature as a base, you're going to have a hard time fitting it to your mold later.


Usually, I would draw the character with the armature's outline to scale on a sheet of paper. In this case, I'm going with a realistic size and shape so a simple Google search will do for the image, with on outline sketched over top.


Then I bend the wire to match the lines.

Because lots of things can conspire to go wrong during a shoot, I always make multiple casts of the same puppets (especially when they're the main character). So, it's a good idea to make all the duplicate armatures now to ensure they'll all match. Usually I do this by taping a new piece of unshaped wire to the shaped one and then bending it to match the other's curves exactly.


Next, tie-downs! Groups of matching screws, nuts and wing nuts are great for these.


Our main character, the mackerel, doesn't have to move (in fact, he can't) so the tie-downs are simply to secure him to the set while we shoot. I've decided to use two tie-downs: one near the gills and one at the tail.


And for anyone who's wondering, that gray stuff is plumbers epoxy. Apparently, few people have ever heard of the stuff (at least that's what I can gather from the number of times I've mentioned it and gotten blank stares). It's toxic, smells and is disgusting to work with but it's an armature necessity.

That's it for now. Next time? Clay and tin foil!

When it rains, it pours...

... both literally and metaphorically this week.

As of last week, I had little to no paying work and my first 'personal project' since college had been shot down rather abruptly (want to know more, buy me a drink or better yet, some ice cream).

This week? Working on a new music video for They Might Be Giants AND starting up a new 'personal project' - a video to a song by the Handsome Family that will combine actors and foam-latex puppets of singing food! What could be better? Having a new job on top of it!*

Sadly, this tea-cup ride of a week has resulted in a rather lame week of blogs. At this point, my brain must be about the consistency of Cream o' Wheat. All I can offer is a nostalgic entry - Japan's weather patterns as seen from my apartment.


Rain. More specifically, the morning after a tsunami. Note the overflowing fish pond and it's distinct similarity to my life these last few days.


Snow.


And fog. Japan's weather's as x-treme as their owls.



*watching the Phillies win against the Yankees Sunday was pretty nice too.

Spirit Photography

I’ve mentioned my obsession with yokai in previous blogs. You may have also noticed I’m rather fond of photography. So, I suppose it was only a matter of time before the two came together to form...

Today’s blog!

My second year living in Kurihara-shi, I set out to produce a series of photographs capturing modern rural Japan while subtly showcasing a specific yokai in each image. I had planned for a series of at least eight photographs; only three were finished.


Karakasa

One of my favorite yokai. The leg was created from Super Sculpey, armature wire and hand-painted. The geta I made myself from some scraps of wood and cloth. The setting is the ‘lost umbrella’ bin from Kannari Junior High’s copy room. All compositing and shadows were done in Photoshop.


Yuki-onna

This shoot was a lot of fun despite the fact that we both got horribly sick afterward. The lovely Lindsey Matsuo agreed to pose for me as the foreboding Yuki-onna and in the nude no less! The setting is the outside bath at the local onsen in Kannari (the best thing about my town). We had to smuggle the camera in (photography is not allowed for obvious reasons) and sneak pictures while some nearly toothless obaasan explained to us that New Zealand was really close to New York City. The snow was created later in Photoshop although it did start snowing shortly after this shot was taken.


Chochin’obake

Another fun yokai and in the same class as the Karakasa above. The setting was a yaki cart that set up shop in front of the MaxValu almost everyday. All yaki carts have lanterns so it seemed like the perfect place for a chochin’obake to hang out. The eye was created in Maya and with texturing and compositing done in Photoshop.

See monsters!

Like every studious artist in college, I doodled in my notebook. Below is a selection from Computer Animation II with Stephen Jackett (I promise I was paying attention, Steve).


For reasons that are apparent, I was obsessed with deep-sea creatures around this time.


A few are semi-realistic.


But most are hybrids of my own design.



A few have even been translated into sculptures (with some obvious adjustments).



Some even made the leap into CG (compliments of MAYA and the aforementioned Stephen Jackett). Note the rigidness of the character; this was before the lesson on skeletons and splines.


And some are destined for more. I just bought a block of plastilina (my first since Japan) in the hopes of not only modeling this little fella, but also casting him in a variety of materials: solid resin and plastic for the internal organs, skeleton and fins while his translucent skin is realized in a clear softer rubber.

That is going to be one serious three (possibly four) part mold!

Monsters, no ink...

I was encouraged (a.k.a told) I should post more drawings.

To appease the (sparse) crowd I shall, but with a slight twist since I don't like to always do exactly what I'm told. Besides, sculpture has always been one of my favorite forms of art.


I sculpted this guy while living abroad, teaching English in Japan (he was even exhibited in a big art show in Sendai). To give you some idea of what that involved, this sculpture in particular was completely almost entire during working hours (that's how much they cared about learning English... I kid, I kid).


The experience did garner one of my more interesting altercation with a Japanese co-worker about how an artist's mind works. He didn't understand that the design for this creature came from 'my imagination'. He kept asking me where it was from. When that proved to frustrating, he moved on to ask if it was a whale or a camel. I finally told him it was a kind of kaiju like Godzilla and Gamera. You think he would have understood that.


Good thing he never saw this guy... it would have blown his mind.