So here’s the first frame of the storyboard. It ain’t pretty, but hey, it’s a storyboard. I’ll probably keep the bedroom.

Click on image for full size view.

Deciding to speed up the storyboard process has helped a lot. I’ve been able to grab enough material, including backgrounds, that I should be able to get started very shortly.

I still think it will be easier in the long run than a drawn storyboard.

The US is at war with Iraq. It’s all insanity and it’s infecting everyone.

Back from San Fran without incident. It got much more subdued after Thursday.

Finally finished Tatar’s book. Really great. The last sentence neatly wraps it up:

Few people look to fairy tales for models of humane, civilized behavior. The stories have taken hold for a far more important reason: the hard facts of fairy-tale life offer exaggerated visions of the grimmer realities and fantasies that touch and shape the lives of every child and adult.

I really couldn’t have said it better. This is exactly why I want to revisit those tales and myths without cleaning them up. It all works for so many reasons.

I picked up Favorite Folktales from around the World. Already great. There’s a lot of source material to be mined here.

I think I’ve been too caught up in trying to make final characters for my storyboard. For instance, it would be nice to have a fully functional Hilda, but if I don’t have source material then I shouldn’t let that slow down the process.

My main goal right now is to get the storyboard done.

On a side note I’m caught in the middle of all of the San Francisco war protests. I’m waiting for the curfews and tear gas any hour.

Tatar’s book just gets better and better. I went to school for semiotics which is the study of why words mean things, how we associate a word like “tree” with the physical object. This has never ceased to fascinate me. This is the root of communcation of all sorts and art is communciation, usually more raw and effective than every day language.

Tatar explores all sorts of analysis of fairy tales. First and foremost is the psychological approach. Psychologists, especially Freudians, have always had a field day with fairy tales. Psychologists have found such fertile ground in fairy tales for such diverse interpretation and yet for more dense and explicit works the interpretation tends to be very uniform.

Tatar has the following to say:

For some, drawing in this way on the lexicon of depth of psychology can seem remarkably inappropriate for analyzing stories that are notorious for the shallowness of their character descritpions.
…
By rigorously avoiding psychological analysis, the plots of fairy tales become charged with symbolic meaning. The physical descriptions and outer events of the tales not only to further the plot, but also to fashion ciphers of psychological realities.

In other words, some times the less you say, the more you are saying. Or maybe the less you try to represent the more you are representing.

Tatar hammers this point home with:

…the study of fairy tales tells us something about the way in which the mind draws on the double movement of the language between literal meaning and figurative expression to fashion stories that dramatize psychological realities.

wow.

Out in San Fran. It’s strange dealing with the 3 hour time difference. Haven’t gotten too much done since I have no internet access in the hotel. The only reason I can even add this entry is because I have access on my job site and it’s lunch time.

Been finishing up Tatar’s Hard Facts of the Brothers Grimm. Fantastic book. Everything you think you know about fairy tales is probably wrong. The analysis of the core of these tales is helping me focus the goals of my stories.

I’d quote some choice sections but my book is back in the hotel.

So I’ve been collecting images as source material for Hilda, the Fish Soprano. There’s really not much out there. The main problem is that everything is such low resolution on the web. I really need a scanner for source material. They’re getting cheaper all the me.

Here’s the direction I want to go in with Hilda. Excepting, of course, that she’s a fish.

[Ed. 12/05 Since this was written. I have a Dell Latitude D610 that more than meets the specs below. I also got a Fuji Finepix S3000. One model better than the one I was hoping for.]

Looking at the Fuji made me think more about my ideal studio.

First I’d need a laptop. I do a lot of work on the road or on the couch.

Hard Drive
At least 30-40 GB. 60 would be nice. These graphics and animation files take up a lot of space.

USB
At least two USB ports (or one and a USB hub). I need it for the camera, printer, scanner, image card reader, etc.

CPU
Fastest available. 2.2 or 2.4 Ghz at this writing. Working with images and video editing is about as resource intensive as you can get with a computer. The faster the better.

Memory
At least 512 MB. But see above. The more the merrier.

CD/DVD player
How else will I sample music and play my Spirited Away DVD?

CD Burner
For burning VCDs and SVCDs

Video Out
For direct recording to Video or playing directly to TV

Video In
Probably not necessary but may be nice for camcorder feeds of sampling TV

Sound Card
Realitively high end. Mainly for a line in for audio recording.

Video
High end. I’m work with video and imaging after all.

Ethernet
10/100 to connect up to my other machines and DSL line

Wireless
Probably not necessary but would be nice for mobility

Firewire
Not necessary right now, but might be necessary down the road. Could probably buy a PCMCIA card at that time.

Well, see the Fuji below.

Resolution
640 x 480 is fine for Video or TV display. It’s ideal for VCDs and SVCDs and what I’ll
probably use most of the time.
1600 x 1200 would be great if I ever get to the point where I want to transfer directly to film

Manual Exposure
I don’t care for the results of most of the automatic exposure digital camera I’ve worked with.

Zoom
Better than moving the camera in for a zoom effect.

Webcam functionality
Most animation programs have an onion skin feature matched with a live preview of what’s in front of the camera. Onion skin is basically an overlay of your most recent photo and the current preview so you can see how far to move the puppet. It’ll work a lot like the video lunchbox. When the onion skin looks good I’ll take the real photo.

An image card reader and at least a second image card
To quickly transfer the high res pics from the camera.

Additionally I need a scanner for textures and collage source material.

Of course I realize I’ll have to comprimise on a lot of this, but eventually this will be my studio.

Man. This is the camera I want.

Manual exposure. Resolution is perfect. 640×480 for TV. 1600 x 1200? Hell, that’s probably good enough for film transfer. I’ve seen it as cheap as $250.

Most importantly it’s also is the only camera I’ve seen in its class that can also act as a webcam. This means it supports Video for Windows. I need that to use my favorite free stop motion software, Anasazi, to onion skin and preview the puppet’s position before I take the higher resolution picture.

Now that Jelly is pretty much done, I can’t decide who to work on next.

Young Joe is the natural next choice, but I’m not sure how to approach it.

Old Hermit Joe will be a wire puppet and filmed stop-mo. There needs to be some obvious physical similarities between the two, but the scenes with Young Joe will be cut-out.

Originally I considered taking side and front photos of the Young Joe puppet. That was when I had planned on the whole thing being stop-mo. Young Joe was the puppet I used in the test loop Balltoss. See my it under [my animation].

Now I’m not sure it will look right. Especially the wire joints.

So maybe I’ll think on it and work on Hilda (the opera singing fish) or the King’s Advisor instead.

This was a working weekend. Taxes, house repairs. Basically catching up on shit I haven’t been able to do since I’ve been out of town.

I did get Jelly done this weekend.

Click on image for full size view.

I set opacity on each layer to make him transparent. I thought it would be useful to show what source images were used in his creation.

This image was used to create Jelly’s “head”.

This one was used for the small tentacles.

And this one was used for the longer tentacles.

Click on each image for full size view.

This is all collage through Photoshop.

Whew. What a crazy couple of weeks. I should be in Toronto this week, but a fortunate series of events kept me home. Hopefully this will free up some time for Hermit Joe.

Along those lines, here’s the newest version of the Fish Doctor. He could still use some tweaking, but this is leaps and bounds beyond my last attempt.

Click on image for full size view.