syb & me

A New Year

I wish you all the best for 2022.

I’ve been away from here for months whilst I’ve been concentrating on stop motion animating. Most recently, making and stitching together some clips by learning to use a video editor. The clips were made for an annual Instagram challenge – “Folktaleweek” – which is hosted every year by a group of illustrators who devise 7 prompts for themed illustrations, one per day. This year’s prompts were: Moon, Dream, Awakening, Feast, Bird, River and Sky.

I used them to make up a story using animation and this is the result. (No sound) It’s about a Girl who dreams that the Moon comes down from the Sky. She is told by the Forest Ancients that she must find Moon and return it. Rook helps her to search for Moon and together they return it to the Sky.

It’s been a bit of a hair-pulling learning curve. But I made it!

Animations

October – Month of Challenges

Well … this time I mean Art Challenges. Instead of doing Inktober this year I am doing an Instagram challenge called “Stopmoctober” organised by Laura Biale. Here is a short animation that I made for the prompt “Piece of Art”.

And here’s the list of prompts. We get weekends off!

Drawings

Inktober 2021

I have done the Inktober challenge for three or four years now and loved doing it. I enjoyed it as a daily practice and it helped me to develop style and technique with various ink media. Most of all it disproved my belief that I couldn’t begin to think of a story when I found my characters Cissie and Bea – and last year, Biskit and Mavis. And there’s the value of the Inktober community on social media which brings the opportunity to see so much of other people’s work .

But this year I have decided not to take up the Inktober challenge. Instead I have decided to devote time each day to getting to grips with stopmotion animation again.

Of course … this might mean the occasional drawing crops up – and if it fits the daily prompt … Well it might just appear here in that capacity!

Meanwhile, for those who haven’t seen this year’s prompts yet, here is the official list. Good luck and Happy Inking.

Animations

Cissie and Dragonframe

Looking for animation software. This is a free trial test of Dragonframe – hence the watermark. The free trial only allows 50 frames per clip… so I’ve looped it in order for it to last more than a blink of an eye because Vimeo is not happy with blinks of an eye as uploads.

This is a trial run for Cissie herself of course. How is she doing?

PS. I’m going with Dragonframe as my software.

Animation Ideas, puppets

Puppets: Horse Part 2

The horse is coming along though not quite finished. The hooves are a problem – how to make them.

I have struggled between making a horse that is unbearably cute and one which looks like a zombie. The result is probably a cute zombie.

Cissie doesn’t seem to mind. She has fallen in love she tells me.