Archive for October, 2008
16 items.
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Yesterday, I posted a pic of a few of the paper flowers H.o.p made for Halloween. And how were they used?
This year H.o.p. went as a Ghost Rider Johnny Angel. We made large wings of cardboard, painted them white, slathered then in glue and then sacrificed a trash-bound feather pillow which had seen better days long ago for sake of them. It was the backs of the wings that were fully coated in feathers, but as I can’t show front and back in the above photo I went ahead and pasted in here a trifling few from the back for effect.
H.o.p. carried a pumpkin (for candy) and also a bouquet of around 60 paper flowers he’d made.
Feathers trailed, but not many. There will be a few scattered on doorsteps in the morning, reminding that we were there.
Marty played accordion. As H.o.p. ascended steps, the accordion wheezing, I serenaded (yes, I sang), “Johnny Angel, how I love you, how I tingle when you pass me by, every time you wave hello my heart begins to fly” and then cut straight to the chorus, “I’m in heaven, I am carried away, I dream of you and me, how happy we will be…” etc.
Then H.o.p. gave away at every household a paper flower (more if there were more people, and he also gave them to several other trick-or-treating kids) and eagerly soaked in the smiles.
The holiday drinking in the old neighborhood seemed to have begun a little earlier than usual at several houses (we always return to Decatur because it’s one of the better places to be on Halloween) and there were a few people who were bleary and a little confused. Someone even congratulated Marty and I on our costumes, though we weren’t wearing any. We were just wearing what we usually wear. She was serious, but then she looked on the verge of seeing double, if she wasn’t already. And she was very well dressed and well coiffed and I guess in her eyes we were…well…I don’t know what we were.
At one house we were such a hit that we were invited over for Thanksgiving. The invitation was repeated several times. Indeed, we were told to drop by whenever!
They were people who perform at Renaissance fairs.
Their appreciation of our effort was appreciated.
It was a little nerve wracking for me, going door to door as a troubadour, singing solo with my life-long professional musician husband. But it was my idea, for sake of backing up Johnny Angel H.o.p. in his costume, and I didn’t chicken out, not even when people turned off their own Halloween background music and asked for a repeat performance.
H.o.p. loved it. He loved giving out his paper flowers. He said it was the best Halloween ever. “They liked it! They really, really liked it!” he said as we climbed back into the car, his candy bucket full, the pacing of the giving out of the flowers having done so well that the paper bouquet was all gone and every household had received at least one flower. “Let’s go somewhere else and do it again!” he encouraged, reluctant for the performing to be over.
OK, so we may not have been the stuff of legend, but we had a good time.
4Comment
Too bad you’re not on our Halloween trick or treat beat.
We spent the night rehearsing and will be LEGEND.
We will be talked about for years to come.
We can hope we will be talked about in a positive way.
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Yesterday I saw something bizarre on the news that made my brain go to one of those last straw places you go to when your jar is filled with last straws and yet here is somehow another and it’s even more kinky twisted than the straw before it.
“Oh,” you say, “certainly you’ve seen some beyond crazy stuff in your life and are little surprized by the insanity that passes as piece of country pie good neighbor normal. What about the last eight years of so-called democracy and free world righteousness? Huh?”
I know, I know. Still, Palin about sunk me when she appeared on the world stage. There was something new and very wrong. She was like a nail tossed in the blender. On purpose. In the hope you’ll be so overcome with horror at the sound of splintering metal you’ll automatically cover your ears and run screaming from the room.
But then there was the Sarah Palin look-alike in Iowa, standing right behind McCain at a rally. With the do and the glasses.
McCain: And thank you for your support of Sarah Palin as well…
At which point the woman touches her chest and bows her head humbly.
McCain: I’m very grateful that.
People cheer. Fake Sarah Palin says “Thank you” and waves to the crowd.
Rachel Maddow (I love her, she’s great, she and Olbermann have me watching television for the first time in uhm…like…decades) treats it here as intentional mockery, an amusing wolf in sheep’s clothing that’s managed to slip in with…well…all the McCain/Palin raging wolverines.
I’m not sure. I think if she was planted by anyone it was by McCain or his people.
Like the green people miniature happy faces camouflaged in the broccoli florets.
A paste-in with subliminal intent. Remember Steve Martin’s “The Lonely Guy” and the party that’s all life-size cardboard cut-outs of celebrities? No? The only reason I remember is because I watched the film for the first time on Netflix three nights ago, because my brain has rotted and I no longer believe in creativity, if you’re not making money it’s just another useless spinning hamster on the wheel (just kidding…kind of), which is what happens when you’ve spent your life writing and writing and painting and painting stuff (yes “stuff”…blank stare) that you hope will communicate, in which you’ve invested your soul, and about the only piece that people come looking for on your website, via Google, is something you wrote about the “amazing aquasaur”.
Bank of America Building
Atlanta Oct 2008
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Pasta Classics, Oct 2008
That damned compulsion to express thyself will eventually just be land fill fodder
October 16th, 2008 |
Kansas 2005
Seems I didn’t feel much like writing anything this week either.
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Kitty and the Rainy Day (H.o.p.'s 2nd Flipboom movie)
October 11th, 2008 |Posted In: General, H.o.p. art
Kitty and the Rainy Day from H.o.p. on Vimeo.
Here’s H.o.p.’s second animation in Flipboom.
H.o.p. started on this on Sunday night last, immediately after finishing his first Flipboom movie, and did much of the work in one sitting. Then he worked on the animation in fits and starts what amounted to a couple of other days during the week. His computer crashed at one point and he lost two scenes (an evening’s work) which took the wind out of his sails for a little while. Also, he was conflicted on the scenes with the Loch Ness monster and spent a couple days trying to figure out viewing angles.
This was the first animation in which he has ever tried to do the movement of mouths for laying in voices afterward. He labored hard over it, having me say the lines for him so he could examine how my mouth moved, and it worked beautifully when he was speaking the lines before we got down to doing the recording. Once we were doing the recording, however, he didn’t hit things right on target, distracted with excitement, but he was happy with what he got regardless.
H.o.p. came up with the story and did all the animation, and he did the voices and he did the sound effects and he chose the Benny Hill theme to go in the movie as background music.
I did a very lame job of recording those voices, effects and music in Audacity. I just couldn’t get things right. It had taken me a while to get it set up in the first place, and H.o.p. was anxious to get it all done and up so there were no retakes, everything was first try.
H.o.p. likes Flipboom–it’s a very easy and intuitive program to work in. It’s so easy that he was able to do the first couple scenes in one night, the first night he began working in the program.
If there’s something H.o.p. doesn’t care for about the program, it’s that the paint bucket tool doesn’t always work. An object has to be entirely enclosed for the paint bucket to fill it in and an object can look enclosed but the paint bucket won’t work. In some instances the paint bucket won’t fill entirely. You can also see where some lines enclosing objects seem to also disappear.
One needs to be aware that when you’re exporting an animation, a good bit of cropping occurs. For instance, in the scene where the three cats are standing and talking together, one was originally able to view the center cat’s whole mouth and below the mouth as well. I realized this happened when H.o.p. did his first Flipboom, and told him he should make sure to have some bleed area but he promptly forgot my warning.
I think he did a great job. And he’s quite pleased with his effort.
If you want to leave any comments you can do so on H.o.p.’s blog where he’s also posted the movie.
Nothing to say all week. Nothing to say today. I watched the debate Tuesday night and was alarmed by McCain. No, say it as it was. The moment I saw the expression on his face as he entered the stage, I felt dread on a scale that surprised me. Subsequently, I have been increasingly disturbed by what’s coming out of his rallies.
But enough on that.
I’m only writing today to say that H.o.p. immediately returned to Flipboom last Sunday and began another movie and with his brief familiarity he made a large leap in quality. He has since worked on it off and on all week, putting in about two day’s work altogether. He finally finished it last night and I’m setting my computer up to try to do the accompanying recording, because he needs my help for this. He can’t try to sync by himself and I doubt my own ability to sync sound with his cartoon considering my primative set-up.
I mean, this kid very carefully and diligently animated mouths for voiceover. I’m amazed at how well he did it, the only problem being that for one scene he didn’t write out his script, he was doing it mentally, and a couple of days after his finishing that scene he forgot one of the sentences the character was saying and he can’t think up another one to match the movement of the mouth. But it’ll hardly matter because my attempt at syncing sound will be lamentable.
Flipboom has its problems. It’s fine but it could be a lot better. More on that later.
A View from the Road, Kansas, 2005
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Je^e mantó thewe ke.
Fernbank Museum of Natural History
2008 Sept
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