189. 36. 2.

Greetings internet folk.

I find myself feeling the need to once again apologize for such a prolonged absence.  But you see the thing is that all of the work I have recently been doing (there has been a LOT of it) is work that I plan to use for my working portfolio.  The internet is in fact very useful in helping me to broadcast myself and my work to far greater audiences than ever before possible, but it is also, unfortunately, the home and lurking place of less than trustworthy people.  So you see, I just don't feel comfortable posting my best work here at the moment.  Once I have everything I need in order and good to go I promise there will come a time when I can finally flood this place with all of the pieces that I am especially proud of.  Until then you will all just have to be satisfied with my occasional doodles and ramblings.

Moving on.

So maybe by now you have all spent a good amount of time wondering what the heck the title of this post is all about, and maybe some of you think you might have even figured it out.
Well you probably haven't.
Those numbers refer to the most recent project(s) that I have been engrossed in which just so happens to be films!  That's right, I have finally made my first short film.  It's very short and very rough but I am extremely pleased with the results considering it was my first ever time experimenting with stop-motion.  But wait.  Sydni, didn't you say that you wanted to do traditional animation?  Why yes, that is correct.  But here's the deal;  this IS traditional.  In fact it's about as traditional as you can possibly get.  For my first film I decided to work with stop-motion (it's essentially the same thing as working frame-by-frame.  Most people are more familiar with it in the form of claymation) because it allowed me to work with my all-time favorite medium: charcoal.

 The whole thing was done entirely in charcoal, which brings us to our first number: 189.

My first film had a grand total of 189 frames, all hand drawn by yours truly and then dumped into Final Cut Pro for editing.  I had actually drawn more than that but because I wasn't happy with where the film was going at the time I decided to cut some of those frames and replace them (good decision).  I realize that this sounds amazingly tedious and labor-intensive for a project that ended up being all of exactly one minute long, but I must tell you all that it was extremely satisfying to see the finished result.  I can't wait to get started on my next film!

This brings us to the second number: 36.

36 is the current number of frames that I have drawn out for for my second short film.  I have absolutely no clue how many frames or how long the whole thing will end up being once it's done.  I just figure that when it's done I'll know, and that will be that.

So that's where the number 2 comes in.  So far I will have made (or as it is currently, "making") 2 short films.  This is all extremely exciting for me.  I just need to keep the momentum going!!

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRTTTT!!!!








ps.  for anyone wondering, no I did not use 189 sheets of paper.  I did all of the frames/stills on one sheet of toned paper using additive and subtractive methods (eraser, chamois, ect.)

pps.  the reason my writing sounds so bizarre and for the crazy run-on sentences is because we recently read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in my English class.  It's one of my favorite books ever and Shelley's writing style is clearly way too influential on me.