Linocut Flipbook

Mixed feelings about this - it was quite a long process and it's sometimes a bit difficult to flip because of the elongated shape. I tried for 3 speeds of walking, but it's not too obvious in so short a time space. Still the actual linocuts came out great - I thought they'd be too small to show any detail and despite not strictly 'moving', they were easy and quite enjoyable to use.

They made nice lino prints by themselves as well. This set came out a bit blurry because there was too much ink, but the colour and line combination still looks good.

Oil, Ink, Water and Sand

More experiments with materials:

Colour Inks and Oil

Strangely the longer you leave the inks, even without any interaction, the more they merge into just one, almost black colour. I thought there would be clear separation and bright blocks of colour, but they stayed quite small to begin with. The biggest problem was that I think I added too many different colours, which probably caused the quick merger later on.

Colour Inks Silhouette

Came out a lot darker than I thought it would, although I like how the ink creates layers of sizes and colours - gets a bit of depth in there.

Colour Inks, Oil and Sand

Had to be really tentative with this - made it hard to get any good movement out of the inks, but the colours help to make it more interesting.

Ink and Water

Accidental, but I liked the action of the ink diluting into the water.

Mono-paint Experiments

Just trying out some more mono-paint tests, but I'm really liking the results. It seems quite versatile, especially as the printing ink doesn't dry out quickly. Images appear a lot clearer on a light box as well.

Mono-paint Walks

Initially this was a test to see how well images would show up when drawn on a mono-print plate and placed on a light box, but then it became a test to see if this process could cope with small images as well as big, expressive ones for scenes.

It did quite well:

Really missed working expressively though, which ended up in a bit of a crazy, experimental animation afterwards.

The walking was good, but after trying out loops before I wanted to see if this action could be made convincingly into one. It seems to run quite smoothly.

Linocut Loop

Love the look of this, especially the grainy film type quality at the top, but it was a bit exhausting to do at the same time as trying to make a linocut flipbook. Plus whereas the usual worse that I can do is get covered in a material (lately it's been seemingly permanent ink), with this I ended up cutting my hand instead of the lino...as well as getting stained by ink. Worth it though and I'm still surprised at how fluid the motion is.

Printing Ink Painting Animation

Just a quick test - love the energy, but needs a bit of refining for a clearer image. Kind of interested in the shine on the plate as well. 'Printing Ink Painting Animation' seemed too long for a technique name, so I have nicknamed this process 'mono-paint'.

Oil vs Ink

Experiments with oil and ink separately reminded me of the old oil and water resistance test that you'd do in primary school. I wondered whether this might look like a Rorschach test if water based ink was used instead of water - the effect is quite nice.

 
But it's even nicer with a silhouette.

Projector Tests

Few experiments with the projector - just trying to see what happens when 16mm film is projected onto oiled paper, through glass and when using coloured plastics.

Oiled Paper

 

 Painted Glass

 

Colour Plastic and Painted Glass (directly in front)

 

Colour Plastic on Painted Glass

 

Colour Plastic on Oiled Paper

 

Food Court Etiquette - Surreal

(Literal) Extension of the live action Food Court man. I wanted to play around a bit with cuts and the psychology aspect of his behaviour, in particular just how strange it was to see him licking his hand this way. Not sure whether he was as engrossed with it as this video makes him out to be...this probably reflects badly onto me if anything...

Thanks again Lucy for the help.

Food Court Etiquette - Live Action

I was amazed to find out that the original series of John Ryan's Captain Pugwash was broadcast live, with the movement being done directly in front of camera with the use of levers. I wanted to have a go at this method of animation and mistakenly set about it thinking that it wouldn't be too hard...Incidentally this took 6 tries to get right and also produced quite an extensive blooper reel.

Gross Man - Now with added 16mm film background! Try and spot the errors!

Blooper Reel

Thanks go to Lucy for masterfully operating two of the levers.

16mm Film (2)

More experiments using 16mm film - this time using oil-based printing ink and leaving it to soak in water-based ink.

35mm Film Animation

First time animating by scratching into 35mm film and making a gif. Have to say that I'm quite happy with the result (I did expect it to just appear as one large mess of scratches).

And here's what it looks like if Photoshop adds the inbetweens in (horrific, but nice fade). Thought this might save me some time if it worked, but no luck - ah well.

16mm Film Reel (1)

Had the chance to do a few experiments with 16mm film with materials like permanent marker, printing ink, pins, cocktail sticks and even nail varnish.

Played forward:

Backward: