Delightful Sculpture Artist

My dad gets a copy of "Angie's List" every month here in Indianapolis, and I've started saving all of the covers from them because they're made by an amazing artist I had to look up: Red Nose Studios.
Here's a video about how the artist created the scenes for a children's book called Here Comes the Garbage Barge:


The style of his figures knocks my socks off, and I love the enormous amount of creativity involved in all of the elements of his sculptures.

Here's another about his work for "Angie's List." Good advice- "stick to your gut."

Eeeeeee- New PES Stop Motion

I have a borderline-unhealthy admiration of the stop motion animations of PES. Hey, I said borderline.
Here's the latest:

Fantastic Mr. Fox in Stop Motion

I already got super excited about this once, but I'm excited all over again after checking out the website for The Fantastic Mr. Fox in stop motion film-form. It's based on Roald Dahl's book (all of which I adored as a kid). I wish I could sit in a theater!! Maybe by next week when it comes out, I'll have some graceful lucky hand make it possible. In the meantime, I don't mind geeking out over the website and watching the little "Featurettes" that show glimpses of the process-- including hand painting, sewing, and sculpting all of the lovely lovely puppets! Their teeny tiny little clothes sure tickle my fancy.

Great Collage Animation

This video by Jeff Chang is a wonderful use of print media in video. It's for Human Fly by Nouvelle Vague.

Yay For Squirrels and Collage Animation!

I was drawn to this artist's work by a blog post over at Modish that included this image:

Um, you might notice that I enjoy our bushy-tailed, nut-hoarding friends (haha, yes, let's move on).
The artist's name is Clemens Habicht, and his collage-y style intrigued me. I've been thinking about collage and animation lately as I have this surge in my gut to make some sort of animation, but right now need to find a way to do it without a camera. That pretty much rules out stop motion of created things (i.e. my antler-ed butterfly flapping its wings). But, as I'm progressing with Photoshop, and I work with Final Cut, I knew there could be a way.

Habicht also does animation, and this video spelled out a "simple" (only in some sense) key-framing method of making collage and animation come together in baby steps of experience:

QUASIMODO JONES 'RocknRollDream' - by Clemens Habicht from Jacky Winter on Vimeo.

As I've been trying to not put too much on my own plate and focus on recovering right now, I think I'll move onto this after I get these 2 handmade markets out of the way.

Yo, Inspiration

I keep a bookmark folder titled, "Inspiration." Here's some of what I've kept:

I really like the style of this graphic, for whatever reason. Link

This site has tons of "Playing With The Moon" photos. Clever, whimsical, playful, wonderful.

Garden Shed Made of Disposable Bottles. Creative and amazingly useful.


Aquatic larva, part of the Nikon Small World gallery of microscopic photo imaging. Just downright fascinating.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo. Amazing, creative, time-dedicated stop motion with paper craft.

Delightful Dedications

Oh, how I love time-lapse stuff...
This video is so inspiring-- apparently this was part of a week-long project for an art festival in Italy:

COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

Happy Looks

I love this claymation video called, "How Happy Are You With the Way You Look?" so I thought I'd share. It's so cute and silly.

Have You Seen 'Waking Life?'

So, I know this movie came out 8 years ago, but I was just thinking about it. I think it's worth a post. Waking Life (Richard Linklater) is a great make-you-really-think-in-a-really-great-feeling-way kind of movie. Maybe that doesn't make much sense, but here's an excerpt.
I'd say it's one of my favorite movies-- great animation (the first time I really saw a movie with rotoscoping) and super interesting...if you're into philosophical meanderings.

(The part from the image above is with Ethan Hawke and the girl that stars with him in the film, After Sunset-- also a pretty good one.)

One of my favorite quotes from the film comes from that excerpt I just mentioned:

 "Tell you what, go up three more streets, take a right, go two more
blocks, drop this guy off on the next corner.
- Where's that?
- I don't know either, but it's somewhere, and it's gonna determine
the course of the rest of your life."

Every moment determines the next.  That's why, even though I do it and can't
help it sometimes, worrying is silly and really pretty worthless.
Care to discuss?

Awesome Stop Motion Animation for Inspiration

eatPES - Home of the Twisted Films of PES

I've been admiring this guy's work for some time now. Amazingly creative, inventive, and inspirational; check it out. I think you'll agree! ("Western Spaghetti" is my favorite)
EatPES