Wooooow

Forgive me the post title, but that's what I thought when I have seen the video below. And it's not about the fact that it's about Harry Potter. It's about the animated figurines made of book pages.


via A White Casousel

Beautiful and enchanting - the more I think about it, the more I realise the beauty of printed text. Lines of letters on a creamy backgound - on the one hand very structured, aligned, restricted with margines, paragraphs ect, but on the other organic and chaotic. When I was little I used to imagine every page has a hidden game between the lines of the story - that the letters form a labyrynth and there is a 'path' between them. Also the slightly rough texture of the paper adds a lot to it, causing tiny defects in print and giving each letter unique shape. No Kindle can provide that.

So take this piece of art: a printed page texture and make it into a poetic, fairytale landscape with tiny figures of spiders galloping through hills formed by book pages. Isn't it pretty? Not sure if it fits the style Harry Potter though - I'd rather animate some sort of philosophical story this way...  One day maybe.

but don't get me wrong - I'm so signing in!

Stop Motion Animation

For the last year I had the most contact with stop motion animation that I ever had in my entire life. Obviously this is due to my boyfriend Jacek, who is very much into stop-frame and directs and shoots his own animations.

This year he has completed two and a half films - "A.R.T." that can be watched here,"Not Growing Up" of which shooting is still in progress and "Once Upon the Time" which was a 1,5 min intro of my Baika Dolls and can be watched (link soon)

Sneaky shot from "Not Growing Up" scenery planning

However the final pieces do not show how much effort is involved in making a stop motion animation. As I had a chance to see everything behind the scenes and I must admit that this is a hard work including a lot of forward thinking and planing.
Jacek is registering his process on his blog: http://stoptheframe.blogspot.com

Interesting thing about stop-motion animation is that it is very traditional and sort of 'old school' of making films, but it is still very popular and appeals greatly to both adults and children, despite all the 3D computer graphics available. In the beginning I considered stop-frame films as a niche but as I'm more into them, I started to notice how stop-motion studios are around and how widely is the method used.
For example today I have found Raspberry Film studio that has very impressive site with nice graphics and lovely raspberry colour theme. Their animations are interesting when it comes to models and scenery, but I the stories could have made more sense.