Frog

Here is my old showreel. To be honest I am putting it here so as to remind me that it's about time I updated it.

The light is beautiful outside at the moment, as is the temperature, and the gentle rain. Today my mind has sustained the first few pages of a story I am reading. It's a chapter actually - and so far a giant frog has poured some tea and is making himself at home in Mr Katagiri's house. All at once I crave to read the story, yet I want to suspend that moment, or rather the vision of the frog pouring boiling water into the teapot. I have enjoyed this vision, it's resonance, throughout my day. I am reminded of it right now as the light outside matches this moment in the book.

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... it's all quiet.









..... until you click on this:



Song: Need a Miracle
Band: Machine Translations
Film clip: Kirrily Schell

(This clip is an edit from my much longer film Toots, with a few extra animated swirls for good measure. Thanks to Greg for the opportunity to make this.)

Tango 7

Here is a still from my comic, Hubba Hubba Hubba - which I frantically hustled together for the next issue of Tango.


The launch is on the 28th of this month. See
Strange Fables for more info.




Nicky launched her book, The Great Gatsby, on Thursday night. What a star she is.
Nicky

I created this little bloke as a demo for my students last week.





I can't wait to have time to print again. I've just been experimenting with this scan of an etching I sold last year. It was an artist's proof, the edition is in an Artists Book so I don't really look at it much. I quite like it and in a way I wish I hadn't sold it. The reason I scanned it in to my computer was to work out how to mend some damage that silverfish had done to it before getting to the actual print with a brush and pigment. So here I can play with it and bring it in to a new form.

Animation

fine

.005 pen

Bloodlines

A still from "Galloping"
an animation I have in an exhibition called Bloodlines.
Galloping is a 2.03minute hand painted animation.
I used E. Muybridge photos, and started by using a process called rotoscoping. The painted element, and some of the animation, moves beyond rotoscoping. There is a morph involved.

:(

And then things went terribly bad with my files...and I'm up, all night fixing the clip.

All the the things... a list

Things are hectic! I'm leaving for Aurukun on Saturday, for 6 weeks. I'm finishing the Machine Translations filmclip today.The Japer is helping me do the final export. Toots is such a funny little character - I want to pick her up and put her on my desk and have her run around. I'll try and pop up a still later before I go. The very good news is that I've had the go ahead to do illustrations for a lovely book. I've always wanted to do this. Other news, I met up with Peter and Glenn on Thursday and showed them some etchings and talked about the horse project (Bloodlines) I have a clear vision of the animation I have to complete when I get back from Aurukun, and I am quite excited about it. I met Glenn at the Matrix 6 exhibition where my Render Project animation is currently 'whirring' (it finishes on Saturday.) I have a lot of ideas broiling as the result of all this project juggling.






And I've wrapped up my teaching for the semester. I feel quite elated and inspired. Exhausted and withered, inspired nonetheless. I am really looking forward to the work up north, I suppose it's nice to be inspired in the way that I am at the moment, as it will be something extra I have to give to my work up there. So much more to write - but I am rushing. I am listening to Cuss - nostalgic..it really strikes me in the chest area, every little note I know so well. Anyway, I'm off.. I do have things about animation to rant about..next time. More about Fantastic Planet actually.

Miss Hammond has an exhibition on at Port Jackson Press at the moment.

Roland Topor

I was looking around at Topor's online presence and discovered that he wrote the scenario and dialogue for Fantastic Planet (with Rene Laloux, the director), and that he created the original artwork! Gosh. It was like two parts of my world crashing together when I discovered this.

Fantastic Planet
Planète sauvage, La (1973)
... aka Divoká planeta (Czechoslovakia: Czech title)
... aka Planet of Incredible Creatures
... aka The Fantastic Planet (USA)
... aka The Savage Planet (International: English title: informal literal title)

Directed by .......................... RENE LALOUX
Scenario and Dialogue by .......................... ROLAND TOPOR, RENE LALOUX
Based on the Novel "OMS EN SERIE" by ........................ STEFAN WUL
Original Artwork by ..................... ROLAND TOPOR
The film was shot in the animation studios
JIRI TRINKA de KRATKY FILM a PRAGUE






The Tenant
Topor wrote The Tenant. I've not read it and thought I'd order a copy. Look what I found..
See the Typo? Read the spine and the cover.

Had a laugh with Petr about it as we concluded that Topor would most likely have enjoyed this little 'error'.






Roland Topor ...as Renfield (on the right), in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979)

Whole

Letterpress buttons in the Book Studio

Spider and eggs in the backyard.













Caren printing on the letterpress.
















Stainhead chap on my desk.

note: Wonderful snaps taken with my phone's camera.

This little bloke was crawling around on my keyboard....the day after I saw Pan's Labyrinth. Ooh.








Here is miss Bird Dropping Spider. She is on the bottom left. There are now 8 eggs. She made another one over the weekend. All of the little white dots you see under the eggs (brown spheres) are the baby spiders from one egg. I am quite fascinated as you can tell. You can see the top egg has a whole where the little one's crept out.



kirrily.org
Everywhere you look there's a Kirrily. Most exciting.


Well the Matrix 6 exhibition opened on Saturday in Canberra. My animation "Marks" is probably still looping right now in the Gallery at Megalo. It is a 5 minute loop made from etchings. It has a particularly raw feel to it ... almost too raw - however it demonstrates a particular aspect of some ideas that came from the residency at Megalo. I think I should have written an artist's statement. I did have a couple of documents that talk about the process however they don't really touch on the the ideas. I think I just need to write a bit more to extrapolate on all of the broiling thoughts I've had on the project that have been keeping me awake at night - in a nice inspired way. The piece is so much more engaging with music - particularly in a public space..though I wanted it to be stripped back - more like a still image on the wall of a gallery. I really need to explore this - this different space. Gallery/cinema screening. hmm.



multiple rhino

YES Piotr Dumala!

I am very happy to discover that this years animation festival includes the work of Piotr Dumala

"Polish animators stand high on any list of master animators. Zofia Oraczewska, Jan Lenica, Jerzy Kucia,Zbigniew Rybczynski, Piotr Dumala. Walerian Borowczyk, Piotr Kamler and Ladislaw Starewicz"
_MIFF


See some of Dumala's work on the ACMEfilmworks site:
Dumala page

ACME filmworks have updated their site. If you go there you can see Daniel Guyonnet's showreel (the showreel on the old site was better.) He is one of the best animators alive today.

hallo.

hi.

animating.

busy.

sorry.


Here are some doodles:




This guy with the head is basically a stain on my desk. There's more of him to come.

Dizzy Miss Lizzy

Click here and then Scroll down a bit to see the invite to Printmakers in Residence of 2006. My Render Project (a little loop of animated etchings) is included. It's not actually rendered yet - but it's churning along.



Hopefully I'll be able to catch some of this whilst I'm up there.
Print Symposium

bucket

Today I wished I was still small enough to sit in a bucket of water.



Here's my animated chap, he is also a bit hot and needs a bucket of water to jump into.

practice webs

Here are some chaps from the Render Project.


Bird-dropping-spider news is: There are 6 eggs (I'll insert a pic soon) and today, being a sweltering 30something degrees, has brought the little blighters out and into the sunshine! There were 6 or so tiny bird-dropping spiders out there wriggling and making little practice webs. (again, picture here soon)









Oh look.
Things of interest:
Living Together



Interestingly enough the Living Together conference was free and open to the public. Not that I want to have a little gripe here..but it is interesting to note that there was a conference of a similar nature in Melbourne last year -open to the public- and ..well lets just say I could have had a four year supply of chocolate freckles for roughly the same price. Not very open to the public methinx. I suppose they had their reasons. Perhaps they gave out 'show bags' with some of Derrida's fingernail clippings included in the goodies. I'm being silly now. :) ...okay it's a little gripe. But that's not why I popped in the link. It's a good link for the publishing house - with some insight into the authors. :)

spider

Click to see what we have on our jasmine vine in the back yard.

It's a bird dropping spider.

Apparently they catch birds, climb up really high..and then drop them to the ground.