This is my first exploration of what I am calling “Video Decalcomania.” When I was still able to paint, for decades I used decalcomania extensively as the ground for each painting and as the main stimulus for my imagination.

Here I used some random frames of video I had shot of an artist in her studio. I imported that footage into After Effects where I duplicated it several times, offset the duplications and assigned each layer various blending modes in an effort to arrive at some random textures and changing images. I exported a QuickTime movie of the above montage into Toon Boom Harmony where I let my imagination go wild with brush marks, lines, and colors accentuating the strange things I could see in the video decalcomania.

I finished it with the creation of a soundtrack using field recordings and synthesizers in Ableton Live. I took the resulting .wav file into After Effects and put the movie together with the sound.

Use the search box at the top of this page to look for more examples of my use of the decalcomania process. Essentially it is the same as the childhood experience of looking for recognizable animals, faces, mountains, etc. in some passing clouds. The Surrealists used the process as inspiration for paintings. My favorite is Max Ernst.

While this video has some fun sections, and a few visual surprises, I find the lack of any plot structure or character disappointing. It makes me want to prepare more video footage and start all over again with new digital video source material to create an entirely new animated decalcomania.