ASIFA/Central January Outing

This month, five of us from ASIFA/Central met up in Kalamazoo for a nice lunch (where we discussed ways to build our community in ASIFA/Central) followed by a visit to the Kalamazoo Art Museum where they were hosting a display of Looney Toons animation and animation art from the golden age of Warner Brothers animation. As I, Jim, Deanna, Jennifer, and Gordon walked through the display, I was struck several times at how much these little gatherings with "my people" mean to me. This first quarter of 2010 won't see me travelling very much as I've got a big project to work on for Thistle-Threads. So there won't be any weekend excursions to Toronto for the TAIS workshops until I get the majority of the animation done for Dr. Nguyen. But these little in-State day-trips every month with ASIFA/Central should really help dispel those feelings of isolation while I toil away in my studio. Every month or so, there will be something in-State to look forward to--something to help foster that sense of community that I love so much that I willingly drive ten hours to Toronto in order to obtain it. Here in ASIFA/Central, we're pretty spread out, so we can't do the kind of weekly events and meet-ups like TAIS does in Toronto. But if we can get to a point where we're offering events once every month, I think that we'll not only be leagues ahead of where we were, we'll see our membership growing once again.

Always nice to be noticed...

Thistle-Threads and I just received a very nice write-up on Gay Ann Rogers' blog recently. In reference to the needlework animation produced for the NY MET and Bard Graduate Center. The November 21st entry can be read on her blog at: http://gayannrogers.blogspot.com/.

Inspiration, part 1

I saw this short animation "the House of Cats" on Jerry Beck's 'Cartoon Brew' blog months ago. So, as I just spent a second weekend at the Royal Ontario Museum photographing crystals and gems to gather source material for a still art idea, thought I'd share this little piece of inspiration.

House of Cats from Courtland Lomax on Vimeo.

Inspiration...

Starting in September, I've started posting links to animations on my Facebook page for all my friends to watch. What I'd like to do here is link to the same animation, but also do a little critique as to why I find that particular film inspiring. Even though we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes, I'd like to keep this critique positive, since it's "our mistakes" that we learn more from. Not that we can't learn from other's mistakes, but there's a fine line between constructive criticism and just bashing someone else's work. There's a lot of animated film that I simply don't like. But even then, having made several animated films myself, I can appreciate all the hard work and determination that it takes to get an animation from initial idea to that final edit where you say "that's it". Even if I don't like the end product, I hope that, when all is said and done, I'm still a big enough person to say: 'you put a lot of work into this film and I respect that you finished it when you could've said "this is too hard, I'm going to go sell insurance instead".'

Food for thought...

And then there's this Animation World Network article discussing the French Animation scene.

Going through the archives...

Needed to free up a little space on my hard drive this weekend so was moving files to my portable drive. Came upon this little sand animation that I created for an animation class I taught at the East Lansing Rec Center a couple years back. After watching it, I decided that it needed an etherial soundtrack. A little time invested in eJay Techno 5 and here's what I came up with.

Keep it short and keep it funny

I've uploaded a copy of my ChickenJam film to my YouTube account. For some reason, when TAIS uploaded all of our ChickenJam films to their YouTube account, the sound didn't come through on mine (no one else's, mind you, just mine... thus adding evidence to my SCAM theory*). Wouldn't be that big of an issue, but the dialog was what added the punchline. Given what little time I had to put this together, I decided to follow the best advice I ever received from Bill Plympton: "keep it short and keep it funny."

When producing this 10-second film, I was aiming for a Grickle or an animated Far Side comic. Not a lot of motion, but the humor would be carried out in the staging and the poses. And the tension would build from there as you waited for something to happen--then an 'out of left field' punchline like you would see in the old Coyote & Roadrunner cartoons. You can judge for yourself how funny it is. It got a big laugh from the audience at the TAIS summer screening, so something must have worked. Thanks again Mr. Plympton. :)



* Chuck's SCAM theory: all machines are part of SCAM: the Secret Conspiracy Against Me. Terminator, 9, WarGames, Tron, the Matrix...they're not movies, they're warnings sent to us from the future about 'the upcoming war between man and the brotherhood of machines!'