All girls are princesses.

One day over winter break, my brother, Joey, who's nine and like to pick on my little three year old sister Mia, told her that she wasn't a real princess. We needed to remedy this before she had a complete meltdown, so I told her what Sara Crewe told me when I was younger, "I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty, or smart, or young. They're still princesses. All of us." So we ended up watching the movie A Little Princess together. And over spring break, I think I will read her part of the book. But if you have never see the movie, you should. Especially if you're a princess. It's beautiful.

I think I need to go watch this now. And do some more little test animations. And finish writing an artist statement. This weekend was not long enough.

Disneyland LPs!

I collect some really great things (besides stacks of library books). Including records. It all started about 4 years ago when I was at a flea market and saw a copy of a Doors album (Waiting for the Sun) for $4. I guess it may have just been the way the cover was so worn with age. Or maybe because my boyfriend had just been talking about the Doors.I bought it. I had no record player. I just knew it looked cool, and I loved the scratchy sounds that accompany old vinyl. I've been collecting them ever since.

Along the way, I talked my dad into digging out my grandpa's old record player, which has since followed me from home to dorm to apartment to new apartment. I have to admit, I listen to it far more than I listen to anything else. I don't even have all my music loaded on my laptop. I have less than a thousand songs on iTunes. And I'm not really into iPods or mp3 players. I have one, and I used to listen to it fairly frequently. But...I don't like wearing headphones while walking around; I feel like I'm missing something. And I don't just sit in my room wearing headphones.

My boyfriend and I still go to flea markets and garage sales and barter with people. And then we have to sort out who gets to take which records home. We even completed our collection of The Doors albums. He has most of them right now, but I'm still holding onto my immaculate copy of Morrison Hotel I found at a little vintage shop a year ago.

My favorite records to collect are ones under the Disneyland label (go figure). Especially the soundtracks to my favorite animated movies. Plus, the cover art is so great! My dream record for the longest time was the soundtrack to Cinderella, and the day I was telling my friend about that wish, we found it in a record shop! I feel like a princess whenever I listen to it. Something just sounds better when old Disney songs are a little on the scratchy side. And Nicholas, being the really great boyfriend he is, got me 15 more for my birthday in December! Some are the soundtracks, and some are storybooks, which I'm so excited to share with my little sister Mia! So I thought I'd share some of my favorites.

Now back to the Mary Poppins soundtrack and storyboarding!

I judge books by covers.

I always have. And I'm ok with it. The way I see it, if a book is that good, they'll hire a graphic designer who's that good to make sure the book looks that good. And I love books with really great pictures inside. Granted, most of the books I read nowadays are about art, but still.

So it works out really well that I work in my school's library. Our library carries pretty much exclusively art related books. It's beautiful. And every Monday morning and Thursday evening, I find myself collecting books to check out, or at the very least, writing down call numbers to come back to. They do limit how many books you can check out, but it's supposedly over 300, so I think I'm ok for a while now.

A lot of the time when I check out books, the pictures are so great that I end up scanning a lot of them. Some of them I want to take into After Effects and animate, but others I guess I just collect. They may come in handy someday.

One of the books I've checked out recently is Tiaras by Diana Scarisbrick. Yup, it's a book solely about tiaras. And so many beautiful pictures! Naturally, when I came across this shelving a book about necklaces, I had to check it out. Who would pass up a book about tiaras? Certainly not the girl who gets packages from her family addressed to Princess Michaela Lynch. Haha. So anyway, I thought I'd share some of my favorites with you. Trust me, it was hard to limit it to just these few.

Ps. If you want to know more about the crown, click on the image to view it larger, and you should be able to read the text at the bottom. Now back to Sleeping Beauty. Er, doing homework.

I love organizing.

Especially by color. Both of my closets (one is just a little hole in the wall big enough for a few dresses) are organized by color. My magazines are arranged based on the color of their spine, as are my books. So I was really happy when I came across Betty Jo's color collages.

Does anyone else feel really happy when looking at these?

A Few More Pixilations

I have been getting yelled at all my life for writing on my hands. Or arms. Or whatever I can get to first. But usually I see it as a good thing. I have such a good idea that I need to write it down right now. And most people don't appreciate writing on walls, so I fill up my hands. But lately they've been pretty empty. Until this afternoon in my Business and Professional Practices writing class. We were working on artist statements, and I guess it forced me to do some thinking and come up with a few possibilities.

So now I'm sitting in class, drinking my coffee, sketching more storyboards, and researching different animations. Again. Here are a few more I suggest you watch.



Nostalgia by Synes Elischka



Life by the Sevens by Lindsay Berkebile



Topic I et II by Pascal Baes



Flapper by John Reed Hryszkiewicz



SupEr hAndZ by Charetteprod

Back to work for me!

More Pixilations!

Well, it seems like rendering still takes up half my life. At least it means I need to take a break and step away from my computer. My studio computer, that is. And go on my Mac and look up wonderful little animations. As promised, here are some more amazing pixilations.



Do you remember the Amazon Kindle commercial that was playing around the holidays? I had so many people (ok, like 4) tell me that it reminded them of something I would do. Which is one of the nicest things ever, since I totally make something like this. Actually, it's one of my ideas for an upcoming animation. Anyway, the song from the commercial is called "Fly Me Away" by Annie Little.



Montmartre by Vimeo user Yeti Hunters is absolutely beautiful. The entire thing is black and white with an elegant little vignette. I am in love.



Mirage by Joel Fletcher was created in 1981 on 16mm film. It has really interesting choreography, and the color scheme is perfect.



The music video for the song "The Game" by Rodeo Massacre is super fun. The goal was to use as many outfits and accessories as possible. And it was shot in a day! It must have been a really long day, though. Can you imagine changing outfits that many times? My 3 year old sister isn't even that bad!



If you have never seen Tony and Paul, then you have clearly never been on YouTube. They use every possible effect you can create with pixilation. It's incredible.

Time for me to run off to art history.

Pixilations

Lately, I've been in the planning stages for a lot of projects. I've been doing tons of research for a documentary I'm making, and lots of storyboards and test animations for another class. I've been itching to do some more pixilations, and I have lots of ideas. I just need to organize them.

In the mean time, I thought I'd share a few more pixilations that I am in love with.


Pretty much what people think of when they think pixilation is the music video for "Her Morning Elegance" by Oren Lavie. It is absolutely beautiful and executed with such precision. My favorite part is where the blankets are replaced by dark blue ones, and she dives into water. I need to do an animation like this at some point.



One of my favorite animated music videos is "Us" by Regina Spektor, which can be found in better quality on her website. I love how it isn't perfectly 15 or 30 frames per second, but a little choppier, in a good way. It's just...quirky, I guess. I like it. Plus, what's not to love about a cardboard piano?



Another YouTube hit is "My Animated World" by Jelle Van Dun. It has all sorts of old school video game references, which is awesome. I grew up with old school Nintendo...as in Mario Bros., not Super Mario Bros., and Tetris and Centipede. By the way, pay attention at the Tetris part. You can see the light changing, showing how much time has passed.



I found this one on Vimeo. It's called "The Return" by Joseph, and has some really interesting scenes. I particularly like the one on the train. And the color palette in general is really nice.



And this one, "Ten Thousand Pictures of You" by Robin King, this one is the kind you kill yourself over. I can even imagine how much time this took. But the result is brilliant. Right from the beginning, with the animated filmstrips, all the way to the dark room at the end.

I'll share more tomorrow. For now I have to get back to editing a little stop motion.