May 9, 2008
artist's way guided intent (may)
by gl. at 6:19 pm
i think i just found my new favorite activity! thursday's guided intent event was based on the theme of "autonomy," and we created full-sized self-portraits in response, all of which were bursting with life, creativity & vitality.
[painting in the studio: click the image to see more of the process]
it's similar in setup to the blind painting activity we do. we started off with some bodywork (breathing, stretching and a guided meditation), then moved into pose practices: we did pairs of possible positions like restful/active, open/closed, spiritual/earthly. then we laid people down onto styrofoam insulation covered with a large sheet of butcher paper. to keep things moving i split them into teams of three: one person getting traced, and the other two doing the tracing. then we hung the tracings on the wall and used the insulation as walls on the side of the room that just has windows. once they got started with the brushes & the paints, there was no stopping them!
i was worried this was going to be too ambitious a project for just two hours, but they all managed to create awesome paintings and none of them seemed rushed. still, it would make for a fun 1/2 day or full day activity, i think.
my only regret is that i didn't get to participate in this activity, because it looks so fun! speaking of which, while people were arriving we noticed a guy run by with a conical party hat, throwing flour at the street at regular intervals. about 10 minutes later, a whole crowd of people also in party hats ran past, following the trail of flour spots!
this was our last guided intent of the season: like last year, I'll be taking the summer off to enjoy the sunshine and I encourage you to do the same. :) but we have one more collage night before that happens, and i'll be teaching "Creative Business Basics" at the iprc may 29:
"Starting a business is easy! Keeping it running is harder. Whether you're struggling with your identity, finances or business planning, this workshop will help you identify the next step you need to take to make yourself legal, stable and profitable in Oregon. In addition, learn about the other people and organizations who are on your side, including inspiration and support from other DIY business owners."
posted by gl. | permalink | comments (4) | categories: artist's way
May 8, 2008
lsgl - babbling
by sven at 11:59 pm
I'm trying to finalize the model for the Elder Things' coliseum... Which I've nick-named "Babel."
Here's a selection of the models I've developed so far:
Activating radiosity in that last pic makes a big difference... It fills in some of the overly-stark shadows -- and adds an interesting texture.
Slow going... Had to write a post just to show myself I'm making some kind of progress!
posted by sven | permalink | comments (4) | categories: let sleeping gods lie
May 5, 2008
moving pictures
by gl. at 4:54 pm
in addition to last month being a big poetry month, it was also a big theatre/movie month for us.
we saw sweeney todd on stage and on the small screen, flawed genius, and a weekly movie (or sometimes two). i also saw darkmatter.
but nothing compared to seeing cirque de soleil! i've never seen it before and i was enraptured the whole time. it was like burning man without the dust! though the subject was potentially macabre (a clown imagining his own funeral procession & death), it was transformed into something magical and beautiful. i've often said my favorite genre is "cute & horrible," ala edward gorey. but generally i'm delighted by making ordinary things magical, so dancing on chandeleirs and tumbling on beds is right up my alley, and i liked those scenes better than the more traditional circus acts after intermission. the only thing i regret is not taking toby with us. ;) afterwards while waiting for the traffic to die down we took a pedicab for a short trip down the waterfront, which was also lovely. i even got a chance to wear a dress w/ mismatched stripey socks!
[if you can't wear this to the circus, where can you wear it?]
also, i'm taking an acting "class," for lack of a better word. it's ongoing, so it's not a workshop, and it's not a place where we learn techniques, so it's hard to describe. but it's taken up a significant amount of brain & emotional space the last couple of months.
posted by gl. | permalink | comments (9) | categories: exhibits & events
May 3, 2008
artist's way open studio (april)
by gl. at 10:45 pm
the studio was packed with other creative spirits for last month's collage night; i had to pull out a little tray table for me so that everyone would have enough room. we had three teen artists and it was delightful to meet them and see old friends. it was a quiet spring evening and we were quite focused, creating 19 collages between the lot of us.
[the poems are gone: click the image to see all our collages]
this features the poem still floating around since the edible book tea: eating poetry. it also includes a piece of the popcorn container from cirque du soleil, which i have yet to write about. i don't know what the light bulb & the pears were about, but i liked the shapes and colors.
like last month, we had an attendee from france! linda has decided to "attend" collage night from afar, using our collage momentum to inspire her own.
just two more events before my summer sabbatical!
posted by gl. | permalink | comments (2) | categories: artist's way
April 27, 2008
poetic license
by gl. at 5:23 pm
it must be national poetry month! i've attended a plethora of wordly events this month:
i started out the month by attending the poemcrazy workshop. we collected words from books & "word tickets" and pooled them together, words like orphans, orchestra, pandora, vigil, eve, mistletoe, rose, admit, doctor, moon, roof, roll, orpheus, fallen, angel, moment, ghost, venus, dark, wine, rumour, grace, plum, devotion, glow, tedium, terror, window, daylight, grim, heretic, dwell, love, clouds, atoms, hollow, swallow, honor, translate, clutter, promise, binge, and trouble.
we spun in place and sat down to try to write to such prompts as i am/i am not/i used to be/i want to be/i love/i remember/i forget, combined with chanting things like my heart says/my mind says/my soul says/my mother says/the door says/the moon says/the river says, and inserting lines like can't give you up/come back to me, later when it's over. we could answer questions like what's an object in the first place you remember living? what container would you be? what source of light would you be? what scares you?
that was a lot to deal with in a short amount of time, and then it was time for lunch! one of the great things about a workshop at innerstandings is that a hot lunch is provided for you (spanikopita, cucumber salad, and tiny cups of ben & jerry's ice cream).
after lunch we gathering objects outside in a little box to use as inspiration for our next writing prompt. we ended the workshop writing about contrast: sleep/awake or inside/outside, like this:
"inside i am raining. outside i am another moon. inside i am columns that support a hall of justice. outside i am a mouse. i am an orphan inside, safe while invisible, a wordless winter. outside i am true, even in the summer sun. stars appear like fairy tales. inside i am a frozen ocean. when i breathe it's like thunder. outside, a yellow bird vanishes. i shiver. safety is written in tiny letters. inside i am a maze of rooms connected by a path of broken china. outside, a golden field rustling against the mountains."
in our spare time we could look at a huge collection of poetry books, read her manuscripts, and look through her photos of boxes & journals.
she thought i had beautiful, if illegible, handwriting. this became important because instead of us reading what we wrote aloud, she read it so we could hear it from someone else's voice. my handwriting is definitely influenced by calligraphy, but the artist's way morning pages style has also affected it: you can't write fast and pretty at the same time.
dayna wrote about her experience at this workshop, too.later in the month i went to see lucille clifton. "breaklight" was the first poem i remember saving in high school. i didn't expect her to hear my telepathic request for her to read it, and she didn't. but of course, what she did read was great. dot hearn wrote about the experience on her blog.
then i took michaelmas to the "secrets & lies" show at 23 sandy. all the books there are poetry, even if they're narrative in nature. i really love book shows at 23 sandy because she has a "hands on" policy, and a book show that doesn't let you handle the books is essentially a sculpture show.
last night i attended vox: a spoken-word chorus. they took a handful of actors and had them speak a dozen or so poems in chorus. sometimes the arrangements were straightforward, and sometimes they were heavily rearranged. "howl" is quite good like this. and e.e. cummings is also very conducive to this sort of arrangement, and so it was no surprise that they featured three poems by him, one of two repeated poets. awesome space: an odd little corner of a shambling industrial building by the railroad tracks by the fremont bridge.
finally, "wolf moon" has been published at counterpunch. it's part of a series of poems i'm writing about the old names for the full moon.
posted by gl. | permalink | comments (3) | categories: classes & workshops, exhibits & events, writing
April 26, 2008
100 sven hours = 100 film seconds
by sven at 5:17 pm
Today is day 75 of my 100 day countdown, pushing to finish Let Sleeping Gods Lie.
Putting in 25 hours a week on animating Act 2, I've just today passed the 100 hour mark. I've got approximately 250 hours still to go.
Interesting to note: Right now Act 2 is 1 minute and 40 seconds long. That's 100 seconds... So, thus far, an hour of labor has been invested for each second of film. (And really, I won't be surprised if each second actually winds up costing two hours of labor.)
Animation is insane.
What am I up to lately? Over the past few days, I've been working on rendering two different skies. One for when the Elder Things' civilization is triumphant -- and one for when it's been smashed. (Check out the photos above.)
new developments
Even at this point in the game, the storyboard continues to evolve as new ideas come to me...
I decided that in order to convey the genocide of a species, having just one symbolic Elder lying dead isn't enough... I want mountains of corpses and lakes of blood! Not only will it be a more powerful image -- it also helps support Act 3. Act 3 is all about fast, violent action; there's no time to survey the carnage. By showing lots of dead bodies in Act 2, the consequences of Act 3 are implied and don't need to be shown.
I've also discovered that I need to show more of Carl (one of my actors) in the Dream History sequence. I've done some experimental shots which I think will work out pretty well... The big surprise (for me) is that the new material changes the end of the film.
Yes, five years into this project, I've suddenly got a new ending!
It's obviously not what I originally had in mind... But it's a DOABLE solution. And at this point in the filmmaking process, that's really what matters most.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (4) | categories: let sleeping gods lie
April 16, 2008
from story reel to animatic
by sven at 11:40 pm
Only recently have I come to understand that there's a distinction between the terms "story reel" and "animatic."
A story reel takes the pictures from your storyboard and makes them into a slideshow. Sometimes 2D elements will be separated from their background and moved around using a compositing program -- to give the clip more life.
Here's my story reel for Act 2 of Let Sleeping Gods Lie:
An animatic is a mock-up of a shot you're planning that's rendered using 3D CG software. Animatics are commonplace both for live action and animated productions.
For the past two weeks I've been slowly going through my story reel and replacing drawings with CG stand-ins. Today I finally got rid of the last drawing left in my timeline. Yay! A small milestone -- but a milestone nonetheless.
This is the 7th animatic I've rendered out so far. I'm going through a process of iterations... I write down notes each time I output an animatic -- and then I go back and make the next version.
Waiting for shots to render out is a killer... So I've been learning to make ample use of two time-saving tactics. One: render clips at "quickshade" resolution rather than "realistic." Two: render clips at 160x120 pixel resolution rather than 640x480 -- that's 1/16th as many pixels that the computer has compute!
Looking at animatic #7, I see camera moves to fix, timing to adjust, effects that aren't indicated, and areas where I might need to create completely new shots. I'm not convinced that the story "reads" yet. ...But it's getting there.
posted by sven | permalink | comments (2) | categories: let sleeping gods lie
