Rain

Here's the image for Illustration Friday. It's an old painting that I did for a script I was writing. I wanted to get a feel for the mood I was trying to create. It's a water colour. Which I normally hate. And while this isn't the most impressive painting around, I really kind of like it. But feel free to tell me what you think I could do to make it better! That's why I'm doing this!

Check out this super cool site. I'm so jealous. And I feel so old and like I have so much to catch up on. If only I had just gone with my 13 year old gut instinct...

http://www.mackinnonandsaunders.com/

Here is the armature with the foam on him. He's portly. I might trim him a bit at the bottom. Anyway, I guess it speaks for itself right? I went through mom's fabric this weekend and found some stuff...but I'm thinking I might go to look at scraps at some places on Queen St. I want a tweed type look for his pants. I got a cool plaid tho that maybe I'll use. It's lighter than I was thinking but that's ok. Also, I think I've decided to add a vest to him. French farmers soooo wear vests. I've seen French Kiss. Mom's working on a wool sweater for him too Tasha! Ha ha. Thanks mom.

That's it really. Sooo busy at work. Gotta go.

So this is what I have done. I'm not completely happy with it and I kind of screwed up a bit of it which I'm sure you've noticed, but I just don't want to go back right now and play with it. Every time I touch it, it gets worse. I should have saved more often.

Anyway, I'm going to try and go back and do everything over again from where I did save. Before I made a lot of adjustments. But I do like it. It did turn out a lot like I pictured. The rope is a little to bright but I don't find it too distracting...yet...also, I don't know how to do shadows in Photoshop. Any ideas anyone? The feet already had shadows and it just looks unnatural to be missing the other shadows...that's where I started playing around before saving. Yargh!

So this is what I worked on last night. Boxers' legs for my illustration for Illustration Friday. They don't look as heavy on the ground as I wanted them to, but I was worrying about my moving background and legs not staying up. It was too late and I was too excited to try and device a way to make them stay. So anyway, maybe I'll fidget around with them in Photoshop. I'm going to do multiple layers and then put them together. So this is just the top layer. And yes, It will be cropped. I don't think it looks too bad for my first try anyway.

I'm starting to get used to the freaks on Queen street in the morning. Not saying I like them, but I'm starting to know how to avoid being targeted. But honestly, when a group of men gathered around a pay phone this morning looking for quarters turned to stare and one of them said as arbitrary a word as "hips" to me, I kind of wanted to say "bald head" or "psoriasis" or "hello, where are the fashion police?" I could ramble on about culture and about how it's meant as a compliment even if I don't like it and it makes me uncomfortable...but what I really want to know is, why just "hips?" Why not, "nice hips" or "swingin hips?" Hips? What is this, random body part blurting day? Why is it that nice looking men in suits don't shout random (or not so random) things at women? Intelligence? That's my rant for the month. Thank you for listening. That is all.

Ok. So I was really really slack last night and got tired at about 9:00 last night and fell asleep by 10:00. So I didn't get anything done. So to entertain you, here is the most current armature. I think this is number four. And this is it. I can feel it in my veins. This is the model. Look at his intricate little fingers! And the massive amount of wire around his torso. That thing's gotta stand strong and hold up to wear and tear.

I hope anyway.

I did get my Van Aken clay today and I'm psyched. Although I am apparently used to living in a caucasian world where the word "flesh" colour usually means caucasian...not mocha. Does that make me racist? Lol.

So I might have a mocha farmer. I'm thinking about it. The idea is growing on me...he's in the fields in France all day long...Henri might be a little brown? Or I could let the controlling caucasian take over and manically order some more clay. Or maybe I could mix white with the mocha? Make it a little lighter? I wonder if that's even plausible.

I also got this from my sister:

How sweet is it? The sign's definitly (eh Laura, eh?) going up in my office. Next to my door.

I'm not sure where I will bring the Gizmo purse first. It's so rockin I don't know what to do with myself.

Anyway, that's it for tonight. Edmonton just got their butts kicked and even though I'm not an Oilers fan, it broke my heart a little. Especially since they were the ones that took my team out. I had to turn it off. I can ignore tragedy, right?

This is what I did today. Once in a while the 1950's female intuition kicks in and I put on a fancy house dress, some heels and I cook all day long.

So this is todays fruit of my labour.

From left to right going clockwise, there's an Asparagus Streudle (my first attempt with puff pastry...this is exciting folks) and pork tenderloin (also the first time I've made this on my own) which I had for dinner. This is the only way I really eat pork. Usually can't stand it. I was born to be Jewish. Next, there's some Tangerine Melt-Aways. But they're really Orange Melt-Aways because It's the middle of June and tangerine's aren't in season! Any good house-woman knows this!

Then there's Mini-Breakfast Quiches which will be my breakfast this week and last but not least something that according to the recipe is a staple in every Canadian's diet...Mac and Cheese. But this is an extra special Mac and Cheese cause it's made from scratch and has spinach, roasted red peppers and ricotta and romano cheeses in it. Yum. I hope. I haven't technically tried it yet...and it's going to be my lunch this week...so I hope it's damn good and I hope my stomach agrees with it.

Anyway, my feet are sore and swollen (I would have been a whiney 1950's housewife) and a James Bond movie is on (my secret love) so I'm going to go chillax and attach some foam to my armature. I'll take pics after.

Later Slater.

Wow...here's a really bad picture of one of my storyboards...I didn't realize I'd turned down the resolution so much. I'll have to work on that.

Also, 40 minutes into the match and still no goal.

So for those of you who haven't seen him, This is Henry the farmer. The model for my puppet. Last night I worked on a brand new super strong armature and got as far as getting Fimo onto his limbs to make them more solid. I just have to apply some foam to his body to bulk him up.

I think I'm going to wait until I go back to Ottawa next weekend and mooch some material off me Ma.

I'm thinking of a way to make his sweater look wooly. I'm worried about felt because it might tear easily. I want to get tweedy pants too. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about his boots yet. They were going to originally be clay, but now I'm thinking I might be able to make it out of some sort of material. I saw a puppet that had leather shoes and they sure looked real. Boy oh Boy! Lol.

But how do you make rubber boots? I'm thinking I can hack out the hat. I'm not sure if I'll use clay for his hair now or some sort of hairy material of which there is an abundance at the craft store.

I also feel like this is changing everything for my set. I was going to make everything out of clay and give it a real plastic type feeling, but now that I'm using material on the puppet and going more realistic, I feel like the set has to mirror that. And I was checking out my favourite site today and there was a topic about the type of table you should use to shoot on. I never even thought about that. I feel like there's so many areas I've taken for granted and haven't thought out thoroughly.

On a side note, it's 30 minutes into the England vs. Trinidad and Tobago match and NO ONE has scored. Yargh.

I also just ordered some Van Aken Clay from the Opus Art Store in BC so I'm psyched about that. I'm going to look at some still digital SLR's on Ebay, but I don't think I'm ready to buy one yet. I also got word of a type of gearhead for a tripod that works well for stop motion animation. And a specific tripod. So I'll look into those. And a moniter? I've heard that it's good to have a moniter? I'm glad I don't have a set time to finish this because I'm either going to run out of money or time.

That's all for now folks.

Samm

P.S. I also currently have bad eighties hair and it's really upsetting me. Why can't I make it look like the hairdresser did?

This thing is driving me nuts. I just changed something, but it's not working. argh! I'm hoping posting this will help. I did however, make a new armature. Nice and strong. I just have to apply the foam. Wish me luck!

This is "It." This is the blog to end all blogs. Because honestly, I was getting tired of having four of them going and being to lazy to update them all so really updating none of them. I'm going to post my animation progress on here. Which should get going pretty well since I got all that help from the nice people at www.stopmotionanimation.com. But really, this posting is just to announce that this is "It" and to get my web address so I can give it to people. So yah. Sorry it's so boring. I have work to do! Will right soon.

V good.