Lena Podesta has started up an animation study group for members of ASIFA Portland. A few weeks back I had a cold and was too fuzzy-headed to machine armatures… So I started work on something for the study group: a set of replacement faces.

Fig.1: The sculpt was done using Chavant medium plastilene on top of a piece of wood wrapped in wax paper. The eyes are acetal plastic balls, which can be purchased either through animateclay.com or smallparts.com (which now offers its catalog via amazon.com). I studied sculptures of Roman emperors as reference while doing the sculpt, which helped me bring in a few nice details.

Fig.2: The mold wall is made from Klean Klay, which Ron Cole recommends in his fantastic mold-making tutorial.

Fig.3: I used Ultracal 30 to make the mold. There is only one place in Portland that carries it… Stephenson Pattern Supply.

Fig.4: The negative image inside the mold is always creepy and fascinating to see. A number of tricks in the DisneyLand haunted house ride are based on this optical illusion…

Fig.5: I put some Super Sculpey through a pasta roller. (The pasta roller is dedicated to polymer clay only.) This is intended to be a press mold, so I simply laid the sheet of Sculpey in and firmly pressed it into the details.

Fig.6: I trimmed the edges of the Sculpey sheet, pressed two more acetal balls into the eyes, and then laid in another sheet of Sculpey.

Fig.7: To create a "skull" that this "mask" can rest on, I poured resin into the negative space.

Fig.8: Here's the skull. Notice that I've given it two bumps on the forehead as keys for registration.

Fig.9: When I pull out the Sculpey, it's pretty easy to distort the edges. The skull helps put the face back in shape — but it's not going to be perfect. A little bit of detail's been lost, but overall I'm pretty pleased with how the pull turned out.

Fig.10: One problem I quickly discovered was that I wasn't doing enough to dig out the eye sockets. On this mask, I wound up Dremeling the interior. There are still problems… On some pulls, the eyeballs are right up against the eyelids — on others, the eyes are a little recessed.

Fig.11: The first pull was a "neutral" face. For the second pull, I re-sculpted the mouth shape to represent the letter "M." I intend to do twelve faces in all, so I can have a full set of mouth shapes for lip sync.

The paint is several layers of Delta Ceramcoat acrylics. These are cheap crafter's paints — but it's invaluable to be able to use paint colors straight out of the bottle, rather than trying to re-mix the right tint every time. The top color here is called "bamboo."

One obvious problem I'm going to run into is eyebrows. How am I going to keep them in the same place each time I change masks? I'm really seeing the wisdom of having the forehead and lower face be separate pieces, which was a big innovation for the movie "Coraline."

Still, even if this experiment is flawed from the start, I think it's worth seeing through — just to find out how these replacement faces work in practice.

I've been making hinges out of 1/16" stainless steel rod… I want to document the gist of the process while it's still fresh in my mind.

A hinge joint consists of a tongue that fits into a groove. Today I'm just going over how to make the tongue.

Fig.1: These are the jigs needed to make the part, each made from .25x.25" 1018 steel. You need two rod-holding jigs and a tongue-holding jig. The long jig on the right will be used later, for making the groove end of the joint.

Fig.2: Put your piece of rod through the two rod-holding jigs. One end must be flush with the outside face of one of the jigs. Use calipers to make a space .5" wide between the jigs.

Fig.3: Put the rod, clamped in the jigs, into the vise. Make sure that one end is flush with the fixed jaw of the vise. Don't forget to put a spacer in the left-hand side of the vise, or it will be damaged.

Fig.4: Use a fine-point sharpie marker to blacken the top of the rod.

Fig. 5: Using a 3/8" dia. end mill, mill downward in .0005" passes just until the sharpie ink is marked. Set the DRO (digital read out) to zero. Proceed to mill downward to Z=.215 at 400rpm using .0025" passes.

Fig.6: Flip the part over, still keeping it clamped in the jigs. Repeat the process to mill the bottom face.

Fig.7: Put a #00 center drill, held in a collet, into the mill's spindle. Start a hole at X=.3735, Y=.124, rpm=3500. (My .25" stock measured .248" in actuality, so Y=.124 is the center.)

Fig.8: Keeping the spindle in the same position, replace the center drill with a #64 drill bit. The bit should be held in a drill chuck, which is attached using an arbor. Enlarge the hole, spinning the drill at 2550rpm.

Fig.9: Remove the part from the vise. Use a diamond file to de-burr the edges and the hole. Make sure the the part can pass through the tongue-holding jig at this point. If not, file it to size.

Fig.10: The part should still be clamped into the rod-holding jigs. Now put the tongue-holding jig on, loosely, just behind the hole. Put this assembly into the vise and tighten it. Now tighten the tongue-holding jig.

Fig.11: Using a .125" dia. end mill at 1200rpm, we're going to part the waste material at the end. Move the end mill to X=.3435. Any slop in the set-up should favor protecting the hole we've drilled, so move the end mill to the right until it physically bumps the ledge that's been milled. Mill through the flattened area of the part using .0025" passes.

Fig.12: In preparation for rounding the corners of the tongue, blacken it with a sharpie.

Fig.13: Put the part into the vise, still clamped in the tongue-holding jig and one rod-holding jig. Put a 1/32" radius corner-rounding end mill into a collet in the spindle.

Fig.14: I've found it works best to align the corner-rounding end mill by eye. Spinning the cutter at 1200rpm, move it to the left .0005" at a time until it just marks the end of the part. Be sure not to use climb-cutting, or the part will be damaged (though it can likely be bent back into shape, if necessary).

Fig.15: Once you've got the cutter in place on the X-axis, bring it downward in .0025" passes, until the corner looks about right. Perfect roundness is not crucial here.

Fig.16: Flip the part in the vise and repeat the previous two steps.

Fig.17: Remove the part from the vise and from the jigs. Use the diamond file to remove burrs. To check that the part is good, make sure that the tongue can pass smoothly through the slit in the tongue-holding jig.

(Yep, all the XY coordinates and rpms are memorized at this point…)

Oh, honey

"Oh, honey"
says the voice in my head—

a voice,
I hasten to add,
that silently chats with both
adult men, children,
and cats, too—

don't feel embarrassed
about being too long-winded.

There's plenty of air in the world
to go around.

All the better that you should get to
exhale completely.

It makes me happy:
then you get to inhale
to full lung capacity.

Everyone should get to breathe.


January 19, 2009

You use a tap to thread holes. A tiny-tiny 000-120 tap costs $50…

Today, while making the groove end of a hinge, my one and only 000-120 tap broke…

Locking the part I was working on in my homemade jig…

Thus also ruining both the hinge and the jig.

Ouch.

the walrus and the brontosaurus

the walrus and the brontosaurus
are sharing tea and biscuits
lingering in fatly stuffed chairs
in the den

i say to dear Bronte
"what days we've seen
what days yet to come
and even more
already forgotten"

the dear lizard replies
head crooked against ceiling
"the years are shorter than they seem
i've counted my footsteps here
in mountain dreams
cane in hand, admired the
mayflies' pageantry

whiskers and wrinkles
i say volcano
your eye twinkles
don't joke sleep
as if you're drifting off
already

old is a such a small thing
counted in millennia absurd
so
toothsome friend:
please pass me the lemon curd?"


January 19, 2009

I tell people I make puppet armatures. I show them photos and then they understand what I'm talking about.

But it's probably impossible for most to visualize the actual process of machining. So last week I decided to take some time-lapse footage of myself at work.

I was working on making pieces of 1/16" dia. rod into tiny hinge joints. Above you can see the raw stock I start with next to one of the finished parts.

The process for this particular part takes me 80 minutes to complete. For you, I've condensed that down to one minute.

Here's the process with the camera set up on the table beside me.

Since I was making several identical parts, I set the camera up again so it could give you an over the shoulder view, too.

(Some of you might recognize the music… Two compositions I did a few years ago: hatching and suave squirty.)

the snail's request

I am a snail
with a feather for my shell
leaving inkwell paths behind me

handwritten and slow
all summer long
I'll draw glistening arcs
my cursive memoir
through your victory garden

please don't pick me up
break the memory
my history
long sentence going back to my birth

just let me write
quill tooth biting paper
let me eat through
sheets and leaves

digesting in my study
quietly

just this little while
until my black blood
with winter
too soon

runs dry


January 19, 2009

For Valentine's Day this year I made Gretchin an "Antimony" necklace.

Our favorite online comic lately has been Gunnerkrigg Court. The main character's name is Antimony ("Annie"), and she wears a necklace like the one I made.

The necklace is made from nine pieces of stainless steel. I cut, milled, bent, brazed, dremeled, and filed the thing into being… Including that ring at the top, which required building a special jig.

I'm really excited by this project — it's the first time I've actually made a piece of metal jewelry from scratch… It brought together a lot of self-taught metal-working skills from the past few years.

sven & i attend a free first friday writing group hosted by ibex studios. this month one of the quick 10-minute prompts was to write a letter to something we loved, so here's a letter i wrote to my beloved ebike, rose:

dearest rose:

you were not my first love and you will not be my last. you are not even my best loved love, but i want you to know that knowing you has changed my life forever. you are beautiful and curvy, strong and swift. many people comment on your grace and beauty, but few suspect what you are capable of and i love sharing this secret between us. even more, i love flying with you beneath blue skies, when the day is free and the world is wide and my heart is open. i love riding with you in the sunlight, the moonlight and even when the snow twinkles in the streelights. i feel like a better person when i am with you: strong, brave, lighthearted and ready for adventure.

love,
gl.

i escaped to the bathroom of a new orleans strip club, and if there had been a window i probably would have climbed out of it to escape my date, a judge with a very large gavel -- if you know what i mean. though he was sociable and very, very generous, i finally had to flee from the pounding music and flashing lights and ask myself what the heck i was doing here, anyway. the question answered itself in the form of Mary, who was just leaving the bathroom as i pushed the door open. “watch it, hon!” she said, not unkindly. i did. i couldn’t take my eyes off her. i don’t suppose this is the story we’ll tell our grandchildren about how we met.

[words drawn: new orleans strip club, sociable, generous, present, gavel]

Thursday

Thursday is brought to you
by the color red!

when you look through the window
it may seem gray
but go outside today
and you'll discover little bits of red
everywhere

on leaves
on cars
on houses
on street signs

I may appear the same
as when I stepped out the door
a moment ago

but actually
I'm two weeks older now
having been all over town and back
in a blink
with my bucket and paintbrush

there was so much area to cover
I had to use a lot of different shades
and I'm sorry to say
I ran out
before the job was really through

but just look for it
it's simply everywhere
dabs and splashes
a little glimmer
hidden and waiting

I put it there for you


November 19, 2009

then sven sent me a still just to make sure i knew it had a bicycle in it, because he knows i can't resist art with bicycles:

[great ideas come from great bike rides]

the breath of giants

the office is the brain of the house
the studio the soul
the kitchen the heart
living room the stomach
bedroom the libido

our home here is
a thirty-foot-tall marionette
and I the puppeteer

each morning I get
the giant moving again
     water the plants
     put dishes away
     feed the cat
each night I
put it to sleep

I look out from
giant's eyes
running from room to room
turning cranks and pulling cords
not a robot that I command--

this house is a living being
and I am the hidden motor
running its body

I am the breath that
spirits through every cell
animating colossus

(and yet
what a small being we are
set beside the great towers
of the city
whose hands touch clouds
gods propelled by
the furious pedaling of
fleas)


January 1, 2009

don't live in the cage with your elephant

i have a love for colossal animals
the giraffes and rhinoceroses
with my camera
i go to Africa all the time
hunting thunderous beauty

but to bring a pachyderm
back to America
is a Herculean affair
i arrived by airplane in a wink
transport back
is four months by boat
on a heaving dark ocean

posters go up
and the crowd murmurs with expectation
but suddenly there's no coin
for opening day banners
in horror you spend every nickel
trying to figure out
what this damned thing eats

and it turns out that what it eats
is time
not by the bushel
but by the year
consuming your earthly body
like only the most ravenous calendar can

proper care and feeding
requires dawn to day-end attention
the would-be zookeeper sets up residence
in the cage beside his capture
ever attending to
its hunger, its exercise, its boredom

you've got the elephant keeper's blues
as it slowly sinks in
just how much bigger
this creature is than you
so lithe and wild on another continent
now the insight:
the bigger the animal
the more excrement it produces

tonight i think i want to go home
to sleep in my own bed
tired of sleeping with my broom
and janitor’s hat
soaking in a stale smell
on these bales beside the behemoth

tonight i'd like to dream
of other dreams


November 19, 2009

(This one ought to help illuminate new year's resolutions a little, too… i.e. "I will tend my elephants.")

Dear Chloe,

Here is something true that artists know… It’s difficult to be creative when your art supplies are too precious.

If you only have one piece of paper, then you want to make the most perfect painting ever. Perfect is scary… So you never even start.

But if you have 1000 pieces of paper — then getting started, playing around, and making mistakes isn’t so scary.

Make a mess. That’s how artists who are really good got that way: by having fun making hundreds of mistakes.

I remember you said you were interested in being an architect. So I’m giving you an abundance of graph paper, scissors, and tape to play with.

It’s totally OK if you never actually become an architect. I just want you to get to explore and have fun. Happy birthday!

New news… This Saturday I'll be a reader for two short plays by David Holloway. I get to be Mr. Rockwell and the Voice of God!

Here are the details for my plays.

WHEN:
Friday, January 29 @ 12:30 noon

WHAT:
PG2 Presents: The Work of Sven Bonnichsen, Amy Doherty and Marguerite Scott

WHERE:
Gerding Theater at the Armory
128 NW 11th Ave
Hothouse Stage (on the mezzanine)

TICKETS:
$5 - tickets available at the door

DESCRIPTION:
Portland Gallery Playwright’s Group presents a variety of short plays from Amy Doherty, Sven Bonnichsen and Marguerite Scott. Sven gives us two offerings: The Buried Piano and The Astronaut and the Nude. In the first, a girl is reunited with a family friend while a massive party for her father’s election bid booms in the distance and a recently unearthed, antique piano rests near their feet. The second play is a metaphysical exploration of marriage, nakedness and the cosmos. In Amy Doherty’s A Touch of Cleveland, we (along with the cardboard cutouts that look on) are party to a Laundromat encounter between two people, each awkward in their own way. Marguerite Scott’s The Ugly Duckling demonstrates the opportunities that come (and go) with plastic surgery.

Here are the details for David Holloway's plays.

WHEN:
Saturday, January 30 @ 12:30 noon

WHAT:
PG2 Presents: Counterparts II: Three Short Plays

WHERE:
Gerding Theater at the Armory
128 NW 11th Ave
Hothouse Stage (on the mezzanine)

TICKETS:
$5 - tickets available at the door

DESCRIPTION:
Portland Gallery Playwright’s Group presents 3 short works from PSU professor David Holloway.

Counterparts: A mother and father wonder if their son had once been abducted. Even the son isn't sure. "What happened?" they ask -- and can anyone really know that question's answer?

Death Panel: Three executives and an office boy discuss pre-existing conditions and whether little Virginia with cancer lives or dies -- all under the watchful eye Mr. Rockwell, the talking head on a monitor who can destroy them all.

The Egg: In a cave that dreams of Infinity, Gods demands that George look through a Portal, within the presence of his family and dead people form his past. He does so, and returns home… But everything hinges on the strange message in his hands. What does it mean: "remember the egg"?

Incidentally: I didn't have time to promote it, but last Friday I got to read stage directions for Brian Kettler's short play, Personal. Brian is the director for my plays — a real pleasure to work with.