New Animations Online

Posted on August 25, 2013 by bobcomings

I have finally tended to some animation housekeeping and uploaded several animation studies and projects to YouTube.

For more about I Wake Up Dreaming, see an earlier post

Bagman was initially just a simple character I designed for use when learning how to create walk cycles and other human activities. In my imagination, I see the interior of Bagman as the location where The New T-Shirt story happens. Some day in the future, Bagman will be developed to include adventures and a sidekick who will be the T-Shirt wearing mouse that lives inside Bagman. That mouse will in turn be able to call on his sidekick in extreme emergencies… The Cute Little Mouse on his T-Shirt will come alive when needed and called upon to save the day.

It Came to Me… started out as a simple study of a head turn and a walk cycle focused on the head of a figure. Then I decided to have some fun with it.

The Soundtracks

As always happens, creating the soundtracks for my animations is the most exciting phase of the whole production. As soon as appropriate sounds begin to accompany the action, it is as if magic dust has been sprinkled on the digital files and they simply come alive! I love being able to combine my love of drawing and sound play in a single form. It is creativity heaven.

Software

I Wake Up Dreaming… was created using Toon Boom Animate Pro2. Then I treated myself to Toon Boom Harmony 10.1, which I absolutely love and which is now the heart of my animation toolkit. It makes frame-by-frame animation easy and fun to do. I am still on the long learning curve, but it is made easy by the great documentation, tutorials, and forums Toon Boom provides.

I did the compositing for all of my animations in After Effects CS6. Most of my sound work is done in Ableton Live Suite 9 with Max4Live. I am hoping to use backgrounds created in Photoshop and Painter in future animations, but nothing is in the works at this time.

Posted in Animation, Sound, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

The New T-Shirt: A Cute Little Mouse Cartoon

Posted on July 26, 2013 by bobcomings

First an Apology

I have come to fully and clearly understand that I am not a born blogger. It has been several months since I created anything for posting here. But… I am happy to be able to post my latest 2D animation today and make no promises about when the next post will appear. Just know that I play with animation and sound every day and occasionally I finish a project.

The New T-Shirt comes out of my childhood summers (60+ years ago) spent watching vintage cartoons on long summer days. A few slapstick cliches frequently seen in those old animations are explored in this new cartoon. While this one is pretty safe viewing for all audiences, mouse lovers may need to cover their eyes during a few spots in the story.

I learned a lot and had great fun along the way. Every animation I manage to complete makes me excited about the next one. And always, the most magical moment is when I add a soundtrack and watch the thing come alive! I love it!


Duration: 01:29
Created using Toon Boom Harmony 10, Ableton Live 9, AfterEffects CS6

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A Kickstarter Campaign Worth Supporting

Posted on January 20, 2013 by bobcomings

Signe Baumane has got her Kickstarter page up and running. It is off to a great start: almost halfway in just 4 days!, but still needs more pledges with 3 weeks remaining.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1055277857/rocks-in-my-pockets

If nothing else, go to the page to see the very informative and entertaining presentation she created. It includes some glimpses of her feature-length film in progress and a discussion of the important need for more national discussion of depression and related mental health issues.

There are pledge levels from $1 to $5,000. Each pledge will be earn a variety of rewards including original signed artwork, DVDs of Signe’s earlier animations, as well as a link to the finished film. I made my pledge and am doing what I can to get the word out. Even if you cannot make a pledge, let others know about the campaign by forwarding the link or this post.

Thanks for your help. I really want to see this film!

Now – back to work on my own current and never-ending animation project.

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Help me get the word out: Signe Baumane’s film is great!

Posted on December 20, 2012 by bobcomings
a funny film about depression

Still from the feature length animation by Signe Baumane: Rocks in My Pockets

Rocks in My Pockets Needs Financial Support

I am very happy to have an excuse to place one of Signe Baumane’s animation stills in my blog. Her works have been incredibly important and inspiring to me. You can find plenty of examples on YouTube. An excerpt from her film The Veterinarian is a good place to start.

Originally from Latvia and now a long-time resident of New York City with a studio and production company in Brooklyn, Signe is currently deep into the final stages of creating her first feature-length animation. It includes frame-by-frame hand-drawn animation with beautiful hand-painted backdrops and props. Her plan is to set up a Kickstarter site in the near future. Meanwhile she needs people who use Facebook to visit her there and “like” her page. This will facilitate broader exposure for the Kickstarter program when it begins.

She needs $30,000.00 to pay for post-production (sound and music). I have already helped in a small way by purchasing some DVDs of her work for sale on her website. I plan to contribute to the Kickstarter site as soon as it is up.

Since I have not yet been able to bring myself to join Facebook, this blog post is my way of helping to get the word out about a very worthwhile project. The film will deal with issues of depression and suicide based on real stories from Signe’s life and family. The film will be highly personal and poignant and help to de-stigmatize mental illness, and, in her own very special way manage to be funny too.

Her blog includes some great video interviews with Bill Plympton in which Signe and Bill discuss her production process, animation in general, and where it is headed. These videos are very instructive for beginning animators such as myself and entertaining in their own right.

Please help spread the word about a very worthwhile project as we await the completion and release of Signe Baumane’s Rocks in My Pockets.

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I Wake Up Dreaming… an animation project

Posted on November 29, 2012 by bobcomings
Still from current animation project. Completion date: early 2013.

Still from current animation project. Completion date: early 2013.

This is a quick post so those of you who follow the blog will know that I am still alive and working every day in animation. My current project is primarily a frame-by-frame tradigital animation complete with shot sequence and storyboard.

Animation has its technical procedures and they can be tedious, but I am finding it very helpful to do a storyboard to help me visually conceive and build the story. Further breaking it down into individual shots helps me figure out what to do next and consider the more cinematic aspects of animation such as camera moves, pans, etc. and to devise positions for the camera (or viewer’s eye) that will help explain and move the plot along. I have completed about 8 shots of what at present is a list of approximately 4o… so I still have a long way to go.

The project is titled: “I Wake Up Dreaming…” It was inspired by a drawing I did in 1968 (White Noise folio #14) of an actual dream completed as soon as I woke up. Recently while looking around my studio for inspiration I opened up my file box of White Noise folios and picked up a handful near the top. This particular drawing with text jumped out at me and brought the dream back in vivid detail.

I am having a lot of fun finding ways to visually represent the ambiguities and surprises of dream space and time. Most recently I have begun collecting and creating sounds to bring the story to life.

Posted in Animation, Digital Drawing & Painting, Dreams | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

SFMOMA Artist’s Ephemera Blog

Posted on November 10, 2012 by bobcomings
a low-relief sculpture of a dream image recorded in Bolinas, CA in 1968.

The Face of the I Ching about to speak the One Word of Truth

I was delighted to be greeted with an email from Tanya Zimbardo, Assistant Curator of Media Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this morning informing me that the poster I created to announce my 1968 show Ritual at the Unicorn Gallery in San Francisco is currently featured “… in a recent image-based post on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art blog Open Space as part of a series based on artists’ ephemera from the SFMOMA Library.”

For more information about that show, check out my entries in the Musical Instruments category and in the Sound category.

To find myself displayed in the company of some of my longtime heros and sheros in sound exploration (I listen to the work of the late Maryanne Amacher almost daily), lifts my spirits and encourages me to continue my audio journeys. You can learn more about Amacher’s amazing body of work at a web site currently in the process of development or via Wikipedia.  You can hear some of the rare recordings of her work at WFMU.org

Footnote: “Nothing is worth listening to.” This statement just popped into my head and will be added to the Nadatorium as soon as possible.

Posted in Musical Instruments, Sculpture, Sound, Visual | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

A Taste of Freedom

Posted on October 9, 2012 by bobcomings

Here is one of my recent hand-drawn frame-by-frame animations:

This one started out by just letting lines play. One frame would suggest the next drawing or two and sometimes it would spark my imagination to complete a whole sequence of drawings. About half way through I knew what was going to happen so I just drew it until it was finished.

The really fun part was diving into the thousands of sound samples I have created and collected over the years to add another dimension to the animation.

In the near future, I will be posting more of my recent experiments and learning experiences with tradigital animation. It is baby steps for me at this time, but each animation I complete makes me want to do another and to learn more techniques and to improve my facility with the software I am using: Toon Boom Animate Pro 2.

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Still Animating with Some Stills to Prove It

Posted on October 6, 2012 by bobcomings

Below are six stills selected from my current hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation projects. I have been so busy learning how to use the software and learning the basics of animation that I have neglected posting here. I am hoping to get several of the finished animations hosted online to make it easy to view them and to embed them here.

The Speaker has an oft repeated one word monologue with himself.

This Speaker has an oft-repeated one word monologue with himself his statements are given visual form as in this frame where he is talking about himself.

The Discussion

The topic of this discussion takes on the dynamics of the proponents’ emotions and eventually explodes.

The Relieved Animator

After much frustration, the animator finally feels good about his work and relaxes. This is a subjective self-portrait.

Maya Dog

This is a still from a very short test. Most likely will not be developed into a completed animation.

The Man with a Leaf to Say

Foliage is growing out of his mouth until the screen is full of vines and leaves… I am not certain what is going to happen next to him or the foliage…

Clothespin Monster

This is a still from “A Taste of Freedom” featuring a figure that morphs extensively in the beginning of the animation then as the dangerous clothespin approaches he dares to probe it with his tongue with disastrous results. There is lots of pushing and pulling, grunting and groaning and eventually he gets “A Taste of Freedom.”

I am having so much fun!! I will make a greater effort to stop by here more often with a post and report on current activities and projects.

Posted in Animation, Digital Drawing & Painting, Visual | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Life Is Short

Posted on August 14, 2012 by bobcomings

Below is a link to another example of my explorations in frame by frame animation (a 6.4MB QuickTime movie). It will probably take you longer to download than it will to view it.

Everything I do in animation is a first-time experiment at this point. I can only hope that eventually my understanding of all the components involved in creating, exporting, and presenting my short movies on the web will improve and the process will not be so daunting and incredibly time-consuming. Right now I feel overwhelmed by it all. But, because I love what happens when images seem to come to life, especially when they are accompanied by sounds, I will keep plugging away at animation.

This one was inspired by my recent 71st birthday:

Life Is Short

 

Posted in Animation, Sound, Video | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

A Bird In The Wood

Posted on July 31, 2012 by bobcomings

Warning: turn your speakers down a bit before clicking on the following link:

A Bird in The Wood

It is a VERY short animation. One of many I am creating in a variety of drawing styles as I teach myself what animation is about.  It often feels like groping in the dark and I am reminded every day just how much discipline and effort is required to create hand-drawn, frame-by-frame traditional animation.

This one was drawn without any concern for creating beautiful lines or shapes. Since I have no choice but to draw with my forearm in constant contact with the arm of my chair, and all my drawing motion is generated only by my wrist and fingers, I take what I can get and continue to seek methods for improving the resulting technique and perhaps eventually even discovering how to transcend the limitations.

Recalling what I have written about Flaws Theory in the Nada Farm website, and how I have applied Flaws Theory to paintings, drawings, and sculptures over the past 40+ years, I am making the effort to “celebrate the flaws” in my interface with animation software and “embrace my own ugliness.” This rather silly animation is an example.

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