Need a Christmas gift for that someone special?

Christmas is right around the corner. If you're looking for a gift for that special someone in your life, I hope you'll consider some of the following products that were produced by women animators: 

Jessica Borutski

Jessie has her own line of children's books that she publishes under her PandaRamaPublishing brand: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PandaRamaPublishing

Monica Theiler (née Bruenjes) 

Do your kids like penguins? Monica has a book following the adventures of her original characters "Penguin and Peep". 'Penguin and Peep: Feathered Friends' is for sale online via Monica's webstore.  

You can also find her book, as well as some extra Penguin and Peep merch, for sale on her Etsy store: ArtistMonicaBruenjes.

Angie Novak (née Hauch)

Lake Michigan inspired and produced jewelry using Great Lakes natural resources (and some not so natural) sold through her "Straight from the Lake" webstore. 

Catherine and Sarah Satrun 

The Satrun sisters have lots of their original artwork for sale on their webstore and you can find selected prints of theirs made into t-shirts on their Threadless shop.  

Joan Gratz

Need a little serenity in your life? Academy Award winner Joan Gratz has released a coloring book of her designs for sale on Amazon.com. Time to break out the colored pencils and pens for some quiet time with The Amazing Cosmic Coloring Book.

Corrie Francis Parks

And lastly, but certainly not least, for that budding animator in your life (or maybe the experienced animator who wants to expand their toolkit) we have Fluid Frames written by Corrie Francis Parks.

If you'd like to see Corrie's bona fides, as it were, check out her film 'A Tangled Tale' on her website -- or watch it below. This hybrid digital/traditional sand animation film was produced using many of the techniques she discusses in her book.

A Tangled Tale from Corrie Francis Parks on Vimeo.

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Animated Thoughts: Burnout... and remedies thereof

I have to admit that I've been struggling with burnout lately.

Longtime readers may have noticed that I skipped my yearly International Women's Day animator interviews this year. That was no accident. Part of it was me being tired after all the effort that it took to prepare and teach my History of Women Animators class. And part of it was me being disgusted with the current state of affairs in our American political scene. Last year, I let my membership lapse in an animation group that I had been a member of for years; reason being: they used to be an organization that was focused on promoting the art of animation. However, over the past few years, they've become a vehicle for partisan politics that has given many within their membership a license to be abusive and intolerant.

Personally, I have little interest in politics and don't want politics to seep in and dilute or overshadow the reason why I started doing the interviews in the first place: namely that I want to see women animators learn their history, find their voice, and tell their story. And while I'm currently working on transcribing an interview with a pair of woman animators that I recorded last month, sometimes you just have to step back and let the world rush right on by you towards the edge of that cliff while you keep working towards your goals.

Even my usual outlet: animation festivals have left me with overwhelming feelings of dread. This month, I skipped the second annual Detroit Animation Festival and the single animation screening at the Capital City Film Festival simply because I didn't want to risk spending two hours sitting through political rants played out on the screen. I've been trying to play it safe this year.

Although, in order to recharge my batteries, I have been doing a couple things:

Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion by Tom Gasek
Fluid Frames by Corrie Francis Parks

1. With the new version of DragonFrame being released, I'm dusting off my DSLR camera stand and dedicating time to solve that annoying image flicker problem so I can do some more under-the-camera work before I upgrade to version 4. Tom Gasek and Corrie Francis Parks have written excellent books on under-the-camera animation techniques, so I'm looking forward to finish reading those two books and doing a little experimenting. After all, I still owe my Auntie Martine a paint-on-glass film.

2. I am still working on the Women Animator interviews, albeit at a much slower pace which incorporates much of my prior research into asking the ladies much better questions. This refocusing, I think is going to show in my upcoming interview with Chicago-based animators Catherine and Sarah Satrun. Look for it and others on my Women of Animated Film website next month. I also had the opportunity to promote two Kickstarter campaigns for prior interviewees, so when the time comes, I'm hoping to re-interview Signe Baumane and Monica Brujenes about their experiences with crowdfunding their latest projects.

3. I've been taking time out to watch a fair number of animated features lately.

Back around February/March, I tried to see all the Academy Award nominated animated feature films around the time of the awards ceremony. Having already watched Zootopia and Kubo and the Two Strings, it was time to track down some of the lesser known features that were nominated this year. I started with the Red Turtle and My Life as a Zucchini, two amazing foreign-made animated films.

The Red Turtle was a co-production between Michaël Dudok du Wit and Japan's Studio Ghibli--home studio for Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki.

It's not often you see a film where there's no dialogue. And more to the point, a film where there's no need for dialogue. The Red Turtle is the story of a man who has been shipwrecked on an island and his attempts to escape his prison keep being stymied by forces beyond his control.

As a long-time fan of Dudok du Wit (the Monk and the Fish is one of my all time favorite short animations) and the works of Studio Ghibli, I went into his film with high expectations and they were met on every front. Definitely worth watching. I won't spoil the ending, but this film seamlessly blends real life with the surreal in a way that only a master like Dudok du Wit can.

My Life as a Zucchini was a very touching French/Swiss co-production animated using traditional stop-motion animation techniques.The story is about a little boy, nicknamed Zucchini by his mother, who ends up in an orphanage with other children around his age. After his introduction to the other children, the film then centers around Zucchini, the budding friendship with a new girl at the orphanage, and a police officer who befriends them both.

It's a great movie to see with kids (I'd say around 8 years and above, though you might have to explain some concepts to kids), but definitely have a box of tissues with you when you watch this film. It's a very emotional film that keeps you guessing how it's going to end. My Life as a Zucchini is being released on DVD on May 23rd. Don't know if it'll get an English dub, but it's worth a watch even if you're not into subtitled films.

I ended up skipping Moana. My heart just wasn't in it. It's a $5 rental on iTunes so I may still watch it sometime in the future, but after Zootopia beat out three vastly superior films: Kubo, Turtle, and Zuchinni, I just don't feel up to sitting through another formulaic Disney princess musical. Moana may be spectacular. It may not. I don't know. I just know that I'm tired of watching the Disney/Pixar behemoth win time and again over films that are far superior in story and structure and that dare to take risks with their storytelling and visual style. Over the past seventeen years, eleven of the films that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature were produced by either Disney or Pixar. And some deservedly so, like Big Hero Six, Wall-E, and the Incredibles, credit where credit is due. But you'll never convince me that there weren't any better films released during the years when Frozen or Inside/Out won. Anyways, I'm starting to rant and on principle, I don't like dogging other animators because I know how hard it is to produce an animated film, much less a good one. So I'll stop now and pin a five-dollar bill to my corkboard for when I get around to renting Moana.

Well, after binge-watching the last eight episodes of Sword Art Online season 2, I drove to Flint in order to watch SAO the Movie: Ordinal Scale. Amazing film. So good in fact that I drove to Bloomfield Hills a month later just to see the English dub version. I can deal with subtitles, but sometimes you just want to take in the lush visuals and subtle character animation without having to split your visual attention between reading dialog and watching the movie.

SAO: Ordinal Scale takes the characters we know and love from two seasons of the SAO anime series and thrusts them into a new conflict around augmented reality gaming in the real world instead of the full-dive virtual reality gaming that they are used to. It sounds simple, but the conflict between Kirito, Asuna and the villains builds in complexity until the final resolution in the last fifteen minutes of the film. The final battle was worth the price of admission and the $30 in gasoline alone! But if you haven't watched both seasons of Sword Art Online, definitely watch them before you watch the movie. Technically, it's not required, but the story will make a lot more sense if you do and you'll catch a lot of the subtleties to the characters' actions as well as a lot of Easter Eggs that the animators threw in from the first two seasons of the anime.

There's supposed to be a third season of Sword Art Online, but if they ended the series here, I'd be happy. It's a nice wrap-up to the SAO franchise.

The last feature I watched was Makoto Shinkai's masterwork 'Your Name.' Breathtaking. Simply breathtaking. Now one could argue that you could have made the entire film live action, but animation has such a unique charm to it that live-action simply can't match. On the surface, this film starts out as one of those 'body switching' stories that we've seen Disney produce here in the States ad nauseum using a flavor-of-the-month teenage actor or actress. But before the fish-out-of-water charm wears off, the story takes a much more serious turn. I won't spoil it other than to say that the film is well worth 90 minutes of your time when it comes out on DVD. I haven't seen any announcements yet, but Funimation did the English Dub, so I expect that it'll be released through them later this year.

Shinkai's earlier film 5 Centimeters Per Second has been sitting on my shelf for the better part of a couple years, patiently waiting until I worked my way through the stack of giant robot anime DVDs ahead of it. And I'm honestly not sure if I was better off going in to Your Name. cold or not. I had no expectations other than the fact that it was the highest grossing animated film in Japan last year and the film blew me away. So much so that 5 Centimeters Per Second is now at the top of the queue. Back when I watched some of the works of the late great Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers) there were many recurring visual themes--including one that played out in both climaxes of Paranoia Agent and Paprika which kind of detracted from them both. So, I'm hoping that 5 Centimeters Per Second doesn't share any thematic elements with Your Name. But even if they do, I'm happy to have been able to appreciate Your Name. completely on it's own merits.

Regardless, I can see why people are saying that Shinkai is the next Hayao Miyazaki.

4. Lastly, I've been looking for other venues where I can learn and sharpen my craft--funny how many of these include a trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Now most times, my trips to the DIA are to see animated films at the Detroit Film Theater or rare exhibits, like the time they brought in a Monet painting from the Musee d'Orsay. This time was a little different. This time, they had a lecture on how multispectral imaging and x-rays are used to expand their research on works of art. And since Tricia over at Thistle Threads uses x-rays to help deconstruct 17th Century English goldwork embroidery, it seemed like attending this lecture was a good idea to gain a better understanding on what and how she does what she does. DIA Photographer and Imaging Specialist Aaron Steele gave a very informative and visually exciting presentation that ran from the basics of multispectral imaging applied to paintings all the way to recent discoveries made when taking x-rays of African religious statues. He even spent time talking about the process of taking high-resolution images of the DIA's art collection for researchers and novices alike. After packing in a ton of information in two twenty minute lectures, Aaron stuck around and answered questions (and got in a little shop talk) from the crowd. Needless to say, I picked up some tips and tricks of the trade that will be applicable to both my forensic animation work as well as my work on Tricia's English embroidery projects.

The moral is: creative burnout can be managed, if you're willing to stay active and search for those opportunities to recharge. :)

Women in Animation: Corrie Francis Parks

Corrie Francis Parks

Following in the footsteps of the first sand animator, Caroline Leaf, but not afraid to make the technique her own through the integration of modern technology, Corrie Francis Parks has created a sand animation called "A Tangled Tale". Having made its way through the festival circuit which includes the Annecy International Animation Festival--the largest and oldest animation festival in the world--her award winning film is now available for viewing on the Internet.

I had the opportunity to chat with Corrie via e-mail a month ago about her experiences in animation and her game-changing film that blends digital and traditional tools: 'A Tangled Tale'.

Q: How much does experimentation with different media factor into your filmmaking? Put another way, do you find yourself coming up with an idea and then figuring out how to do it using sand animation, or do you just start with a blank pane of glass, a handful of sand, and then play while waiting for the happy accidents to teach you something new that you can integrate into your filmmaking process?

A: When I was first starting out with sand, I did a lot of experimenting. I would spend hours trying out different methods of shaping sand and figuring out how to make it move. My first sand film, "Tracks" came directly out of these experiments. The animals seemed to break free of the amorphous piles of sand and just want to run all over. So I definitely built "Tracks" up from the happy accidents I discovered during that time.

Now that I have worked a lot with sand, it sometimes work the other way. Having an idea in mind gives me a starting point for further experimentation. In some of my recent commissioned works, I have made it a goal to incorporate sand somehow, even though the concept may not necessarily make that the obvious choice of technique. This sort of puts me back at that initial stage of exploration again, and that's how I can push the technique further.

My goal at the moment is to play with different types of "sandy" materials. I have a sculptor friend who gave me a bag of his leftover marble dust from all his polishing, and a student gave me a jar of sand from Lake Michigan. I tried animating sugar in one workshop, because we didn't have any sand available, and it gave me a plethora of new ideas. So I never am very far from experimenting with materials.

Q: When you made the decision to work with sand animation, were you influenced by the works of silhouette artists like Lotte Reiniger or sand animators like Caroline Leaf--or even more experimental animators like Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeïeff (pinscreen animation)?

A: Caroline Leaf's work has been a huge influence. When I was in high school I went to a summer animation camp (CSSSA) at CalArts and at the time, my head was only full of Disney characters. The films they showed us absolutely blew my mind. Norman McLaren, Ishu Patel, Frederick Back and of course, Caroline Leaf. Her work taught me to think of materials as part of the story - that they are intimately connected and as visually powerful as the drawings that serve as their foundation. I have had professors both in undergrad and grad school that have encouraged me to play with a lot of techniques, which cultivated an experimental way of thinking. Each of my films from that era has a different look - and only one of them is sand. When you are in school you don't have the luxury of spending an insane amount of time working with a particular material because you have deadlines and parameters for your work. Now that I have been working with sand for several years I can see its potential both as a stand-alone technique and in combination with other techniques. To borrow a phrase from another animator friend, "A Tangled Tale" is definitely a "research film" in my mind. I still feel like I have a long way to go before I consider myself a master of sand animation and I look to those early experimental animators as inspiration to keep pushing the boundaries further.


A Tangled Tale from corrie francis parks on Vimeo.

Q: Sand animation carries restrictions, much like any 2d medium--most notably a lack of three-dimensionality in scenes as well as characters who are locked into silhouette. Do you find that these restrictions limit you as a filmmaker or does it help your focus on what's really important in your story? Do you ever find yourself thinking 'arrgh, I could do this really cool scene if only I was using cel animation instead of sand?'

A: Well, the main thing I catch myself thinking is "I could do this so much faster if I was drawing!" I don't mind the flatness of sand - I tend to think that way when I do drawn animation as well - crazy perspective shots were never my style. The limitations make me pay much more attention to the texture of the sand and the fluidity of its movement. I am a big proponent of limitations in my working methods. If I find myself struggling with something in an art project, I will create a set of rules to follow - like limiting my color palette or using only one type of brush - so I think the limitations of sand are an asset for me.

In A Tangled Tale, I was really struggling with how to create a dimensional feeling to the water without making the environment feel too CG. Most of the camera movements are along that 2D plane until the climactic scene at the end where the perspective shifts mid-shot. That was a very intentional moment which visually reinforces what's going on in the story.

Q: You funded your film through a variety of sources: grants, donations, Kickstarter, etc. How has crowdfunding changed the way you go about financing your films?

A: It has made it possible for me to make films that are at a professional level. Since I work as a freelancer, I strongly believe that trained, skilled artists should get paid a fair market rate for their work. Anything that I would want for myself, I want to offer to my team. I don't think I would have made this film without Kickstarter because I would not have felt right asking people to donate their time. Some people did without me asking and others offered me reduced rates because they believed in the project and that was amazing, but it was their impetus not pressure from me and that is what makes the film feel so polished and professional. The effect snowballs because when there are so many people invested in it, I make a better film and when the film is great, other people want to jump on board. The Montana Film Office gave me a very nice travel grant to take the film to festivals and other festivals have noticed it and wanted to promote it.

Q: From the perspective of a woman animator, what do you think is the most important thing that authority figures (parents/teachers/professors) can do to encourage girls who are considering a career in animation?

A: I wish someone had made me sit down and learn a basics of how business and accounting works! This is probably NOT what any young animator wants to hear from their parents/teachers/professors. I certainly didn't listen to mine when they gave me good advice. The animation industry is changing. A lot of the work is moving to small, boutique studios as the big studios ship out overseas. So having some good business sense will be important whether you are going to start your own studio or work at someone else's. When I was in college, I interned at a small studio in New York and I was sure I would never want the stress of running my own business. Yet here I am, balancing budgets and pitching to clients in between the actual moments I'm animating. Having those skills is what enables me to do the work I really want to do - playing in the sandbox!

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Readers interested in the nuts-and-bolts of Corrie's animation process will enjoy viewing the following video. Corrie has posted a 'Making of' video that she recorded over the span of producing 'A Tangled Tale'.


Making Of - A Tangled Tale from corrie francis parks on Vimeo.

Another of Corrie's animations that showcases her sand animation technique is "Snow", an animated Christmas card that she produced.


Corrie's website and blog are located at: www.corriefrancis.com and corriefrancis.blogspot.com respectively. She has created a website for her film "A Tangled Tale" located at: www.atangledtalefilm.com. And you can follow her on Twitter at: @CorrieFrancis (https://twitter.com/CorrieFrancis)

You can view other animations that Corrie has produced throughout her career on her YouTube channel. Additionally, you can purchase copies of "A Tangled Tale" on DVD, which includes the making of video as well as several of Corrie's other sand animated films. Her webstore is located at: atangledtale.bigcartel.com.

Lastly, Corrie just published a short piece on "animationstudies 2.0", the official blog for the Society for Animation Studies, where she presents her film and discusses her filmmaking process. You can read it here.

* Interview originally published on my sister blog Animated Women, January 14, 2014.