This is beautifully animated, but there’s one detail which makes me go a little buggy. Watch the baby’s eyes. They are so real, compared to the rest of the figure, that it edges into the uncanny valley. This is a problem that crops up in a lot of different forms of world creation, from set […]
e-baby and the uncanny valley Read More »
Emily DeCola has been hired to create puppets for the African Children’s Choir. She started with these design drawings and has hired me to help her build the puppets. My primary job on the fish is to take her drawings and translate them into patterns that can be quickly reproduced for the sixteen fish puppets
The new They Might Be Giants Video uses paper robots in a really delightful animation that should feed your steampunk, robot, paper, animation loving impulses. It’s good. You’ll like it. I particularly like the robot gladiators. Spotted at the Paper Forest
That’s not a command, it’s an invitation. Kill Henry Sugar is the name of a band. You’ve been listening to them lately on my Coraline videos. Tonight, they have a CD release at the Living Room. (154 Ludlow St.) The band starts at 10:00 If you are in town, come join Rob and me. If
Kill Henry Sugar, Tonight Read More »
I need to update it, since it has none of my Lazytown work on it, but, at least it’s online now.
There’s a certain euphonious delight happening with that title. Anyway, we are now into the part of the build where I am creating the final dolls. Everything goes much, much faster once I’ve got the patterns created. At the moment I have a pile of body parts on my table waiting for me to assemble
Coraline Assembly Line Read More »
The legs start the same was as the arms did, so we’ll skip all that and go straight to the knee joint. I glue two pieces of fabric to the back of the leg, making sure that the joint is completely snug. It is important to have things tight, so that I don’t have slop
Coraline has lips now, thank heavens. I filmed myself making a draft of her head today. It’s not the final draft, but it will show you how the assembly happens. The first thirty seconds are a montage of the dull pattern tracing, cutting and such. The last six minutes of the video are in real-time
Drafting Coraline’s face Read More »
I had to head down to meet Keith De Candido so I could finally sign the bookplates for the new Doctor Who anthology, and the restaurant was in the neighborhood of several paper stores that I needed to visit. It’s a good thing too, because with the flooding from the storms here last night, I’m
Paper and testing Coraline’s hair Read More »
Friday, I made a wing mechanism for Irina Kruzhilina, the costume designer for Mabou Mines production of Song for New York. She needed it to extend upward and unfurl like a fan. Here’s a quick video showing what I was up to.
This is a fine, fine use of pop-up books and puppetry. Spotted by John Scalzi at Ficlets.
Pop-up puppetry music video Read More »
Maggie is definitely feeling better. I offer the following video as evidence of her general health.
The fierce jungle cat Read More »
This, right here, is why I get cranky when I see an author write something like, “he flopped like a marionette.” Perhaps, “he flopped like a badly-operated marionette” might be applicable, but Joe Cashore will now demostrate that, yes, a marionette is capable of realistic movement. I had the pleasure of seeing him perform live
Joe Cashore and his marionette horse Read More »
It was a pretty day outside, but this was my view for most of the afternoon. We were recording a new project for Subterranean, actually I should say re-recording. We have discovered that switching between a British accent and a faux Spanish accent is not my forte. I’m glad the Spanish accent is supposed to