Lovin' Spoonful

I haven't been able to really dive into the set yet. Instead of diving in for a gorging feast of work progress, I've only continued to sip on little props. I bought a set of wood carving tools in Little Tokyo over the weekend so I thought I'd try them out on carving Rana's wooden kitchen soup spoon. They work great and it's much easier to make things out of wood than I imagined it wood be. I also found two perfect scale metal cups at the same shop and a small tub of super thick clear gel that may be great for animating tea pouring into the cup for $1.


I carved the first spoon from one of my actual soup spoons that broke but it split. For the second spoon I drew a symmetrical pattern in card before tracing it onto a tightly grained plank.

I carved slowly and carefully so as not to slip and cut my fingers (succeeded) or through the bottom of the bowl (didn't manage that, but the hole wasn't a deal breaker). I sanded the carve grooves down and oiled it. I finished it by smearing brown and black chalk and gloss medium all over to give it the charred look my real spoons have.

Special Studio Guest: DJ DYER

Artist and Animator, DJ Dyer, has been involved in her animation project Wanted for the past year. I've marveled at her keen model building skills and her mastery with fabrication detail and scale. I was delighted she'd be willing to make time for a visit to Halfland on her trip down to Los Angeles from British Columbia this week. She's got a ton of fun things planned for her solo expedition from the woods to the jungle.

When people are excited about Halfland, I get excited to have them stop by. It's usually a good reality check for me to make metal note of where I am in the production and where I want to go and why. I showed DJ the set and the finished props, showed and telled the types of puppet armatures and materials I knew of, ran down what was next for the landscape. I filled her in on the essential coolness of knowing Mike Brent. We even had a mini film festival where we screened and discussed Ron Cole's masterpiece, In the Fall of Gravity, and were awestruck by the incredibly animatable puppets Nick Hilligoss sent over for the Underwater scene in the film.

What surprised me was how much I loved DJ's main characters that she brought with her, Jed and his sidekick Tito. I'm not generally a teddy person but these were so soft and lovable I could see why they already have a huge following. (At one point, Jed had nearly 3,000 friends on a certain social network and was receiving bags of fan letters and gifts of handmade clothing!)

Another wonderful unexpected turn for me was the depth and substance of my conversation about art and animation with DJ. We are the same age and spoke about specific influences in our upbringing that may have prompted stop motion to be such a consuming passion for us. We discussed the difficulties of trying to explain to perhaps more practical people that our films are our art and don't require any measure of success to fulfill their purpose. How the Art World and the world of Art Education have nothing to offer us at this point. We both know What We Are Doing, even if it's wrong. I found the conversation to be extremely galvanizing and supportive.

What a nice surprise to find another kindred spirit and friend in this world. DJ, You are welcome here again anytime. And in the meantime... I very much support what you are doing from here.

I Liked That Blanket

This looks like a comfy soft blanket strewn on the bay window set, ready for pulling up over your legs. Grab a pillow and settle in for a nap when the garden is finished. What it is though is an animatable firm metal sculpture inside stiffened wool, sewn into a draped shape, secured to the set with hot glue.

I took a perfectly good mohair blanket and cut out four squares of it and strips of fringe to finish. I used several layers of painted foil sandwiched inside two layers of the wool. The green color on the original blanket would never do as the cottage will contain colors in the warm family only. I used Brazilwood and yellow dye to stain and change the colors. I saturated the whole assembly with a lot of matte medium to tame the fringe so it won't move too easily during filming.

I also finished the table skirt on the kitchen table. I ended up trying to add some creative life to the cheap fabric I used by hand-painting dots. It made it only slightly better so I'm not loving it. But I think it's a small enough factor to not need more energy put into it. Miniature pleats on the skirt's panels were fixed with hot glue and wired at the bottom to make them animatable too.

Dusting It Off

Notes follower, Rane*, gave so many creative, original ideas for the Halfland story I won't be able to add them all in the first two films! But I was able to make one of her suggestions for the cottage... Dust Bunnies!

When Paul left on a work and family visit 3 week trip last month I had a dreamy cartoon balloon over my head with a picture of me working the whole time on the set and making huge--"got the set done!"--progress. Instead what's happened is I took the entire time finishing two book projects that had to get to press (I will post photos of them to my new design site linked in the profile) and had a medical scare. So, instead of getting a ton done I got near NOTHING for Halfland done. I keep believing that I'll be able to, even now.

I promised Nick Hilligoss that I'd cut corners on building Halfland stuff wherever I could to conserve my time. I did twice, once in how I made these dust bunnies and once in choosing to use cheap quilt fabric for the kitchen table skirt instead of choosing exceptional fabric (a pleasure to do) and/or hand painting a pattern on plain. Corners--> cut!

I was going to clay-sculpt, plaster-mold, and hot-glue-cast a little bunny, paint it with glue and then add the collected real dust. Instead I crumpled clear cheap sealing tape into abstract bun bun shapes and finished with free range cat hair and clothes lint. (I did not have to look hard for this material, I just captured a few of my own wild dust bunnies.)

*In Rane's flurry of ideas for me, it came to light that her ability to fill in so much detail in my story in part has come about because she has many years in-the-trenches with her beautiful kids. Mothers have to rapid fire answer their children's questions all day, everyday. She's developed an uncanny creative imagination as a means of anticipating her kid's minds.

I think this is an extremely fascinating notion, that there's no better creative mind on earth for developing stories than that of a creative, caring, young mother and her little guys. I can't believe what she and her kids came up with! (To see more of them, please click through to the Flickr entry above)

An Inside Joke

Made a surprise pepper mill for Rana's kitchen out of a wooden cat toy, wooden disks, and various metal bits and beads. Held the odd bits together with a clothespin while I brushed in glue to hold it together. The mill's body finish is a dusty porcelain crackle with a brass top. Rana also got a sealed gift bottle of saffron petals courtesy of an old miniature Tabasco bottle, adding to the others collected.

Taking a cue from readers Brian and Rane in the comments earlier, I stained the cottage floor with nothing but pure coconut oil. It worked like a dream and still looks rich after it's dried. Thank you, guys!

Friend of reader Peggy Fussell, Sharon Ferg, has made something beautiful for Halfland. She crafts wonderful woodland things out of acorns and raw wood. I couldn't resist buying one of her spectacular miniature tea sets. I knew it couldn't be made large scale enough for Rana, but if she made it small enough, it would be ideal for the Writing Mouse. The excellent photo of it above was taken by Sharon before she sent it but it looks even more magical in person. Sharon so generously also sent along a bonus of mini knitting needles (including tiny a knit underway) and a proper pipe.

The Mouse puppet above is the small version of the character. He'll be made larger for Film 2 and should be able to use it then. You are extraordinary, Sharon, thank you for sharing your talents in this film.


The explanation: I'll say this quickly: When I was a child, my mother would often show me a newspaper clipping she carried in her wallet of what I remember was a photographic version of Magritte's famous L'Explication of a blended carrot and glass bottle. I can see the clipping crystalline clear in my mind. It was well done, many years before computers, and had a perfect representation of a 3D carrot-bottle made in a darkroom. My mother was fascinated with the image and her enthusiasm for it affected me. She would repeat, "See, Shelley. it's a bottle [pointing to the bottle] and a carrot [pointing to the carrot], and then say, a carr-bottle! [pointing to the blend with a big smile]. It's one of the few moments I recall her ever talking to me.

I guess this won't be quick. A while back while I was making props for Halfland, I thought about Magritte's painting, and the photo version from the 60's from the wallet, and Half-Land now. I thought about pictorial metaphor, synthesis, hybrids, double image puns, unifying objects of different domains, surrealistic works, etc. Maybe my entire interest in half-animal/half-human creatures originated with the moments I spent closely studying that image in my mother's wallet. I thought for a private joke to myself I'd include a carr-bottle growing in the set's garden, as a progression of the figurative idiom.

I made a replica of the blended bottle out a dark glass bottle I had here. I bought the more wine shaped ones to make additional configurations; maybe split down the center, etc. But the scale of it didn't work for either the bottle or the carrot. So I made a carrot growing inside a bottle. It was fun making the carrot out of cut foam so it would stuff inside the bottle's narrow neck (I had experience from xmas gift 2007!) I don't know if it's successful, but it is a nod to the concept and truly an inside joke.