July 22, 2008
names of the mighty
by sven at 4:16 pm
John Hankins (AKA castlegardener) has started a sketchbook exchange. And, much to my own surprise, I'm participating!
Ten people. Ten sketchbooks. Draw on five pages (ten, if you use both sides). Pass the sketchbook to the next person on the list. Ultimately, you get your book back with drawings from a bunch of cool artists.
My big secret: I mistakenly thought there would only be one sketchbook being passed around when I signed up for this. Oops. Oh well -- I'm committed now.
"What a terrible thing to do, to deface a perfectly serviceable painting -- especially with penmanship of dubious quality... And yet, I'm finding that the more layers I pile one atop another, the richer the visual texture I create. It's a technique I call "obliteration." I'm not sure what good will ultimately come of it -- but it's one of my best artistic insights of the past few years, so best to just keep going down this road and see where it leads me. Similarly, stream-of-consciousness text seems to have a place here. Promising."
I've been having a lot of fun with laminating pages with layers of different colored tissue paper. It's kind of like a doing a wash with paint -- but with potential for some really interesting textures.
I'm also having fun with black-on-black and white-on-white artwork. I'm really pleased that these scans turned out as well as they did. I expected them to be completely illegible.
Heh. And because some folks in the exchange were joking around about inserting secret messages in their art... There's something hiding on the "hello" page if you look really closely.
Sorry, dear readers: I used a technique that can only be seen if you hold the book in your hands.
(But if you ask nicely, I'll tell you a cute story about how I originally happened upon said technique. ;-D)
posted by sven | permalink | comments (3) | categories: sketchbook
July 20, 2008
we are not licked
by gl. at 6:23 pm
dearest elf: fear not! a new poetry car season will begin soon. the rainy season tends not to encourage spontaneous poetry, but trixie and her magnets have just been washed and the fair weather will undoubtably foster automotive poets everywhere. trixie is delighted you wrote to ask about her, though!
[we are not licked]
posted by gl. | permalink | comments (0) | categories: trixie
July 9, 2008
lsgl: the 100-day countdown is done!
by sven at 11:59 pm
The 100-Day Countdown is DONEDONEDONE!!
Unfortunately, Let Sleeping Gods Lie is NOT.
And what that means is that LSGL will not be ready for submission to the 2008 H.P. Lovecraft Filmfest. This truth is a terribly bitter bill to swallow -- but there it is.
Yet, I'm choosing to count my victories. During the 100 days, I put in 288 hours sitting at the computer animating. (I was hoping to break 300, but some truly massive renders tied up the computer for days at a time.) What all this work bought me: Act 2 is storyboarded, all the essential props and animation cycles are done, and final renders for more than half of the shots have been completed.
I'm going to take a brief summer break from LSGL now. Plans aren't definite yet, but I'm likely to pick up the project again at the beginning of September.
As a way of putting closure on the big push, I want to share with you the shot I just polished off tonight. It's the most complicated one I've done yet.
It took 128 hours of render time to output that 17 second shot of Babel. That's 5 days, 8 hours, 6 minutes... Not including the two times I had to re-render large portions due to errors I missed during tests.
The file that outputted this shot went through 58 versions. I can't even begin to count the number of test frames and low-resolution renders that I outputted while getting to that final version. In the end, I actually divided the shot into into 4 separate files (based on a master), so I could output each section most efficiently -- removing everything that couldn't be seen during that portion of the clip (e.g. the sky, or the stuff at the bottom).
Consider all the elements that go into this shot:
- a moving camera that follows a fine-tuned path
- the sky
- a coliseum with a texture specific to this scene
- a Shoggoth body with a unique texture and geometry displacement
- several types of tentacles, arranged in arrays, each with displacement
- splatter where tentacles connect to walls
- gray light from the sky
- red light that seems to reflect off the Shoggoth
- green blood that pools differently on 3 tiers in the arena
- ~1800 Elder Thing bodies (4 small arrays in many different arrangements)
Depending on how you count it, getting this one clip done ate up almost a whole month. (Good thing I can use the same basic set-up for a few more shots.)
I began the 100-Day Countdown (appropriately) on April Fool's day. Today, July 9th, marks the 100th day. I had set out to do at least 15 minutes every day during the push -- but according to my records, I've got zeroes on 12 days. About half of those are attributable to the computer being occupied with renders; the other half are due to Life trumping LSGL.
A lesson learned: 100 consecutive days is too damned long. Pushing for 30 days is easy-peasy... 60 days is OK... But beyond that, going without any kind of break just gets too miserable. When I start back up again after summer break, I'll definitely be using some other strategy to organize my time.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (6) | categories: let sleeping gods lie
June 27, 2008
our house is red and purple!
by sven at 10:58 pm
We've painted the house... Now it's red and purple!
The house was built in 2000, and due for recaulking and repainting. At last: our opportunity to get rid of that horrible, bland gray!
Selecting the colors was nerve-wracking. I spent hours and hours sitting on the corner across the street, holding up paint chips, trying to visualize the possibilities. Paint colors are like house guests... I really wanted to get to know the folks who'd be coming to stay with us -- intimately -- before they moved in.
As the first coats of "caliente" red started going up, the neighbors were dubious. They'd drive around the corner slowly, and shout questions out their car windows:
"Did you pick that color yourself?"
Yes.
"It's... Bold."
But, as the "kalamata" purple peaks and "aplomb" lavender trim started going up, I sensed people starting to warm to it. The best comment we got: "I like the color! The less beige in this neighborhood, the better!"
Amen, brother!
Most of the houses in this neighborhood were built all at the same time. Block after block of gray, pale tan, pale yellow, white trim... They're all going to be needing new coats of paint pretty soon. We're more or less the first to repaint -- and it would delight us to no end if it our "bold" choice inspired others to also get a little daring.
Besides wanting delicious new colors, we also decided that we wanted to go Earth-friendly. The paints that we used are from the Benjamin Moore "Affinity" line. They're a bit more expensive... But they're low VOC (volatile organic compound), last extra long, and are extra resistant to fading.
The paint job was done by Paintegrity -- whom we have nothing but praise for.
- they specialize in Earth-friendly house painting
- they did the whole job in just five days (!!)
- they took care to do a good caulk job (almost more important than the paint)
- they were exceptionally detail-oriented
- they gave everything at least two coats of paint, to guarantee durability
- they didn't leave behind any mess at all
- good, decent people -- pleasant to have around
I'd be happy to send more business their way... They're the kind of group that I really want to see stick around and flourish.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (15) | categories: studio space
June 24, 2008
keeping the computer cool
by sven at 8:00 am
This is another "B project" that I did recently while waiting for some animation to render.
Last year, when the weather got hot, Gretchin helped me by setting up some fans pointed at my hard drives. The boxes that the fans have been standing on were a bit precarious, so I finally went ahead and built little wooden tables to replace them.
Ah! Much less prone to being accidentally kicked over. :D
posted by sven | permalink | comments (3) | categories: studio space
June 23, 2008
paintbrush holder
by sven at 9:42 pm
Two weeks ago I built this paintbrush holder. While I'm waiting for animation to render, sometimes I use the time to work on a "B project." This project was one of those.
The top is made of clear acrylic. There are divots in the base to help keep the brushes from sliding out of place.
And yes, I've put matching labels on the brushes and in front of their respective holes. Anal? Well...
Toward the end of Monster Month 2007, I decided that I wanted to invest in a bunch of decent brushes in different sizes, but all of the same brand (Winsor Newton). Prior to this, I'd been using a completely random array of brushes...
I want to move in the direction of understanding what distinguishes one brush from another. Making a holder that forces me to think about what brush I'm reaching for is part of this process.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (5) | categories: other art, painting
June 13, 2008
just make what you like?
by sven at 2:22 pm
[from an email to some artist friends]
"Just make what you like!"
You'd think that's all there is and all there could be to making art... But actually, the more I think about it, that's not what I want to do!
While journaling today, I came up with this thought: I want to explore beyond "what I like," discovering original, unexpected material.
I'm an artist/filmmaker who's very oriented toward process. To an extent, I'm more interested in creating an interesting Process Plan than a perfect Product. When I design a process, I can't guarantee that I'll love what evolves -- but I trust that by the end something unexpected and intriguing will emerge.
You might not immediately know what I'm talking about.... Here's an example of one possible process:
Go on a walk through your neighborhood and write down all the nouns you see. Come home, select your favorite words from the list. Write a poem that makes use of those words. OK, now stand up and move around... Make five full-body gestures that embody the idea of the poem. Got that? OK, now string them together in a sequence (with segues) to make a dance. Next, keeping your dance in mind, take 15 minutes to write a short story that's inspired by the motions you went through. And finally: Make a quick stopmo film of that story using rough-hewn puppets, sets made from painted cardboard "flats," and pop-through animation.
A little crazy... But you can see how repeated transformations are going to lead you somewhere that you never expected to go. And each of the steps in this Process Design is simple enough that you could get through the whole thing in just a couple of days, if you really push.
Go through a process like that ten times, and you'll have a collection of crappy little films that are punctuated with moments of pure genius. NOW you're ready to sift out the gems and assemble something that you could really love!
...Anyway, that's what I'm chewing on today. :P
posted by sven | permalink | comments (0) | categories: writing
