New Shoot!

I had another shoot and it went swimmingly (har har har). I'm pleased with the results. I had to adapt some of my technique to get it done, but it really turned out for the best in that regard. I had wanted to do replacement arms using 3D created templates, but it really got too finicky. The 3D aspect was great with the Pupurun project but the arms were so small it wasn't worth it here - I ended up just making the arms quickly by cutting strips and folding them.

They could have been more finessed, but I really wanted to have something to at least try out. I have been reading about Yuri Norstein's thoughts on animating and one thing from him that stood out to me was that he explained that spontaneity is important in art - that over-analyzing the process will strip the work of its original quality.

I have seen that in my own work, like in painting, where I have over-worked the image and lost a lot of its gestural quality as a result. What was more important here was the motion of her arm surfacing so as long as it was in the correct position I decided I would be happy with it. Martin also suggested to me earlier to make a few replacement heads and have my cardstock and scissors on set so I could do quick fixes and that helped very much - in the end, it allowed me to finish the scene with her resurfacing, because I just ended up making a few more heads to replace with at that angle. The black hair on her head was still wet paint when I shot it! I reused my already made arms to fashion the front crawl/doggie paddle off screen. So that was my lesson in spontaneity on set!

These are the arms I made and some pictures of the set.

























































































































This was the first test of the arms alone -



And this is the footage I shot - the paper around her head is to diffuse the light and will be masked out after.