This is so past overdue, but I think this animation I did for @ava.ryss may be the most proud I've ever been of a project. The first time I saw this drag act it brought me to tears!! The things it made me think and feel completely changed the way I view drag and burlesque.
I'll talk more about process stuff for the animation later, but for now~ THANK YOU for trusting me with the most beautiful story I have ever seen told on stage. You and @thevonvoid are phenomenal, breathtaking, powerful artists, and I'm so proud for the chance to support you both and set the stage for your gorgeous work.
This weekend we celebrate death in many forms 🖤 happy Halloween!
This beautiful illustration of the original Death duet between me and @thevonvoid was created by the one and only @riel.thing , a beautiful artist and friend 🖤
Another time lapse! I gotta find a better angle for these...😅
The original plan for this act was to make it more of an explicit collage with all cut-paper elements, but given the constraints on time and the key choreo moments that were crucial to hit at just the right moment I opted for a more typical construction for the hands. They are a mix of aluminum wire, rope/cord, paint, and paper, with aluminum bones so I could quickly create the poses I needed.
While I didn't collage the hands themselves, the nature of this animation had me thinking about the whole thing as a collage in its own right. Each stop-motion element was shot on green screen and then brought into clips of footage from the actual documentary that @_dykotomy_ used for his audio. I treated the footage with a *lot* of composites from light leaks and other elements to give it a more deteriorated look, and then I also took the paper I'd used for the puppets and some other patterns and used those as textural punctuation. For each "impact" moment with the hands I shot a few different lighting conditions, to make those moments land a bit more harshly.
There was so much guesswork for this project; we didn't know the exact dimensions of the screen, and so I had to do a bit of sloppy napkin math and hope they'd all line up. I actually ended up rendering a couple different versions at different scales, just in case we needed to troubleshoot day-of (huge thanks to @togbolog for that excellent suggestion!) but thankfully it all worked out beautifully the first time.
Because I can't stop saying it~ thank you SO MUCH @_dykotomy_ for the chance to be silly and weird and play with new ideas. Your art leaves me in absolute awe and I would follow you into the ant colony again without a second thought.
ThE hAnDs CoMmAnD::::
Belated but very special post all the way from April @holeshow69 😝😅
What a wild ride this project was! I really didn't know what it would all become when I started; all we knew was that we wanted @_dykotomy_ to be able to interact directly with the screen. That meant a lot of close coordination between what I was doing with the animation, and what Tommy was doing on stage-- which was new territory for me! By the end of it, I was viewing this more as a collage than an animation.
So much love and gratitude to @_dykotomy_ for letting me join this wretched parade! I can't sing your praises enough 🔥 you are ~SO~ talented and an utter joy to work with, and your ideas are delightfully horrid. 🖤🖤 I adore your monstrous mind.
I've finally started taking time lapse footage when I work on these animations! One thing I like about this is how you can see me wearing different clothes every few seconds; this project took me days to finish, and sometimes didn't have more than an hour or two in the day to dedicate to animating (which amounts sometimes to just a few frames of progress 😝). Also if you look closely you can see @king.killabite in a few frames-- thanks for keeping me company during some of the long nights!
Some process stuff, for anyone who's interested:
The lantern post and door frame are both made from balsa and other scrap wood pieces, the lantern itself is a wire frame dipped in black paint and skinned with bits of this vellum-esque translucent plastic sheet, and the light is an itty bitty LED. The moss is real, and the "water" is a slime I made with borax and glue. Everything is sitting on a platform I built with wood and a large glass window in the center so I could light the river from underneath and get that nice ethereal glow. The lantern and door hinges were made of copper wire, so I could adjust them frame by frame, and I made a mold for the wave shapes I wanted, which I would press into the slime as I went along. The camera was set up on a slider I rigged along the set, and I pushed that along each frame as well, with a ruler taped underneath so I could push it by exactly 2mm each frame.
I definitely let my ambitions take the reigns a little bit this time. I had no idea how much work it would be to constantly have to replace the batteries powering the tiny light inside the lantern, and animating consistent waves on a body of water is,,,, hard, it turns out. All of these were new elements I had never incorporated before, and doing it all in the same shot was way more complicated than I thought it would be. But after seeing @ava.ryss and @thevonvoid perform this act the first time and *sobbing*, when they asked me to do the background I knew in a heartbeat how I wanted to do it. Thank you again for letting me be a part of something so beautiful!!
The paleontologists got it wrong!! 🦖💅💀
There's something about receiving selfies of your friend's tramp stamp so you can draw it onto a dinosaur's ass at 3 in the morning that really makes you appreciate life (you know, the one Hawkeye is too sexy for).
@thrustfest was absolutely wonderful and inspiring, and I'm so glad I got to be a small part of it. So grateful to @hawkeyefiercedrag for giving me an excuse to bring one of the stupidest things I've ever drawn to one of the biggest gatherings of drag kings the world has ever seen. You are *such* an incredible performer!! And this was an utterly inspired act. 💜🦖💜
Protest art can be as exhausting as it is cathartic. Hard to know what to say~ even since making this animation I feel like it hits me a bit differently, and words feel like a poor way to express how I feel these days.
Here's an abridged version of what I made to accompany @king.killabite 's incredible performance from the December @holeshow69 , with just all the major transitions. Thank you so much to Killabite for giving me such a great chance to channel my rage, fear, and frustration into something that feels important. I'm constantly inspired by your work, and I'm proud to be your collaborator on such a big project.
I suppose it's introspection day... 🤔
This year had plenty of pain, sure, but the thing I'm most struck with on this last day is how much joy I've felt-- more joy than perhaps any other year in my adult life.
This time last year, I told myself that what I wanted most was to find a community of people that extended vastly beyond myself, and to feel held and seen and supported by those people. Amazingly, I've found that community, and it's been even more beautiful and rewarding than I could have dreamed. I am still shocked by how rewarding the relationships I've built this year have been, and I'm extremely grateful to have been met with such love and warmth.
To everyone I have met and shared time and space with this year: I love you, I am so grateful for you, and I have greatly valued your presence in my life. I can only hope that I can work to give you all the same joy and love that you've already given me. The thing I'm most excited for out of everything in the next year is all the ways I will get to nurture all these beautiful relationships, new and old, and to watch what they might grow into.
From the whole of my being, thank you (yes, YOU) for being so kind, beautiful, inspiring, goofy, creative, energetic, challenging, terrifying, and loving. Here's to all the things that are worth fighting for! 🖤💜🤍💛
Okay, y'all~ the teaser trailer for the movie @king.killabite and I are in just dropped! If you're in the mood for a gay, trippy, unhinged, raunchy sci-fi classic parody about an alien race's secret plot to turn the whole world gay, then strap in and come see DAMN FINE FROM OUTER SPACE.
Tix are on sale now for a screening at The Capitol Theater on October 19th at 7pm! Link in my bio ☺️
Directed by the amazing, unparalleled Ruby Cowe @belalooseghosty
(CW: satirical depictions of police/military)
I'd told myself I was still taking a break from animation.... but when @dulce.de.leather asks you to help with visuals for a performance how could you say no?? Maaaybe I will have to do more of this soon~ ☺️
I had SO MUCH fun bringing this lil scorpion guy to life, and once I started the ideas didn't stop flowing.
Maybe I'll post more process stuff later if there's interest~ but if you haven't already seen it, go check out the *absolutely stellar* full performance video from @dulce.de.leather and @ava.ryss -- they are both phenomenal artists and inspire me on a daily basis 💕
And here is the only BBQ I made this weekend.... 🥩🥓🍖
...okay, I actually made this large intestine prop way back in April but something about the timing of posting fake guts this weekend felt...appropriate?
Had so so much fun putting this together and making it look ultra gross!! Thanks to the amazing and phenomenal @thegagathachristie for trusting me with this prop and for wearing it so elegantly as a boa~ 🪱🩸
In true form, I'm sharing this backwards... This was my contribution to last night's raffle at Performers for Palestine. I was so honored and touched to be able to take part in something so special, and I feel so grateful to be in a community that is empowered to take this sort of action. You all inspire me so much-- for the first time in a while, my heart is predominantly filled with hope. Thank you, deeply, to everyone last night who showed me how powerful we are together, how capable of beautiful things.
Last slide is the phenomenal cast; I wish I had a photo of everyone (cast and crew) together on stage at the end!! I tried really hard to tag everyone but I definitely got cut off before I reached the end~ anyone I could not tag, please know that you hold a dear space in my heart from last night 💖
