Celebrating 10 Years of Animatng

Woohoo!  It has been a wonderful 10 years!  Back in August of 2006, my dad and I did our first animation together.  It was a bionicle walking across the table and aiming his weapons at the camera.  The animation was about seven seconds and ran at 5 fps.  At the time, we were using a camcorder that could only capture six frames at a time with a rate of 30 fps.  Every week after church on Sunday, my dad and I would animate together coming up with new stories and characters.  It was because of this that I called my animation studio Father and Son Studios.  Now I animate by myself, but still with the loving support of both my parents.

I celebrate with my new animation reel showing my latest work:

Additionally, I was feeling some major nostalgia while looking back.  As odd as it may seem, I have kept at least a few of my bionicles, so I decided to animate them again.  I started with a figure from the same toy line of the one in my very first animation.

I'm actually rather proud that I was able to create the illusion of weight for his plastic gun.    There is a slight jitter on the left hand side of the screen.  That's me digitally covering up my reflection that was in the window in the background.  As implied, I plan to animate more of my old bionicles, mainly just for fun.  If these short videos become popular, I may be convinced to make a larger project featuring these old toys.  I might even make animations featuring new ones.

On top of all this, Laika also celebrated their tenth anniversary.  They are the amazing studio that has produced Coraline, Paranorman, and Boxtrolls.  Just today I watched their latest film Kubo and the Two Strings.  Although, the story is a little predictable, I highly recommend it.  It's essentially a hero's journey told in the setting of ancient Japan.  It's amazing how they keep pushing the boundaries of stop motion.  The film is so beautiful and surpasses their past films in the technique.  Such a wonder film to behold!

As for my soil project, I'm still experimenting with puppet building materials.  However, I'm getting close to solving some major problems.  I can feel it.

Thanks for reading and may God bless you!