Check out this sweet video of the Re-Animated event on March 1st at Zeitgeist. Thanks to everyone who came and made this night extra special!
This is an excerpt from the documentation video of the creation of Tess’ latest film, a sand animation. It will premiere at this event on Thursday, March 1st. It’s free! Don’t miss it! FYI this video is sped up %10,000!
My animation stand with sand on it
I hope to see some of you at the Capitol Hill Art Walk tonight! My studio will be open to the public from 5ish-9ish. Look for ‘Green Door Studio’ or ‘Local 1520’ on the Blitz Art Walk map (we’re in the same hallway as them). The address is 1520 11th Ave, above Purr.
I’ve been working on a sand animation, an ‘Exquisite Corpse’ piece for a big animation event on March 1st called Re-Animated. It, along with six other shorts from Seattle animators, will form a collective film that premieres that night.
Come see what it is and how it works. In the meantime, here is a still and a little video to get you salivating. And participating animators! Don’t worry, none of the images you see here are the first or last ‘prompts’ I pulled out of the hat. These will remain safely secret until the event! –Tess Martin
Exquisite poster design by Stefan Gruber!
The Seattle Experimental Animation Team presents ‘Re-Animated: An Exquisite Corpse Animated Event’, part of the March Pioneer Square Art Walk. Starting from 8PM, the Zeitgeist Coffee space will be sparkling with multiple projections on windows, screens and the exclusive Flying Cinema kites, displaying clips from recent animated shorts as well as a specially created collective film: seven clips forming a continuous Exquisite Corpse loop. This event is free and open to the public.
Thursday, March 1, 2012 8:00PM – FREE
Zeitgeist Coffee
171 S. Jackson, Seattle WA 98101
ABOUT THE EVENT
Two years ago the Seattle Experimental Animation Team held a mobbed event at Zeitgeist Coffee with four projection screens featuring twelve local artists. Re-Animated ups the ante by featuring the world premiere of an endless animated loop, specifically drawn, sculpted, pixalated or otherwise animated for the night’s events by seven Seattle animators, forming an exquisite corpse film.
Seven animators (Salise Hughes, Tess Martin, Webster Crowell, Stefan Gruber, Otto Bulut, Eric Ostrowski and Clyde Petersen), pulled slips of paper out of a hat – these contained two images (‘Girl on a bike’ or ‘dog barking’, for example) that were to be the beginning and ending images of their short. The prompts had been predetermined by filmmaker Salise Hughes so that, once edited together, the seven clips would form a continuous loop.
The animators are still unaware of one anothers’ prompts, ensuring that Re-Animated will be an exciting evening for all involved. The informal setting will also host recent work by other local animators projected onto screens, windows and flying cinema kites suspended from the ceiling.
This event hopes to expand the public’s awareness of animation as a medium of personal expression by bringing it to the Pioneer Square Art Walk, an evening traditionally centered around painting and sculpture. At the same time it encourages animation lovers, who have normally only experienced the medium at sit-down screenings, to enjoy animation in a gallery-reception environment, giving them an opportunity to interact with the artists. On a simpler note it is a party atmosphere for animation lovers to meet art patrons over a beer or coffee at the close of Art walk.
ABOUT SEAT
Seattle Experimental Animation Team (SEAT) is a collective of animator/filmmakers who use a wide range of techniques to make films frame by frame. SEAT uses nearly every technique from classical hand-drawn to computer animation. SEAT’s members make films independently, but group endeavors involve bringing animation to non-film locations, and these have been some of our most exciting activities. Outside our globally touring animation program (Inter-Action), we’ve created animation installations at Susan Robb’s Long Walk (2011), Arabica Coffee (2011), Zeitgeist (2009) and we’re embarked on a commission in Cal Anderson park to animate a wall mural for Sound Transit over the course of four years. Our growing collective of award-winning animators includes Webster Crowell, Stefan Gruber, Britta Johnson, Drew Christie, Clyde Petersen and Tess Martin.
The SEAT website is www.experimentalanimation.org, and the Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/experimentalanimation.
Did you miss the Inter-Action program of animated shorts when it screened at the NWFF in June? Well, fear not! It is playing once more at the Naked City Brewery in Greenwood, this Wednesday, February 1st! And it’s free! If this sounds familiar, it’s because the January 18th screening fell right in the middle of snowmageddon and we had to reschedule. The program is 75 minutes and is comprised of 12 locally made animated shorts, including Tess Martin‘s Plain Face, Stefan Gruber‘s Both Worlds, Drew Christie’s The Man Who Shot the Man Who Lincoln, and Bruce Bickford‘s The Comic That Frenches Your Mind! Not to mention shorts by the talented Britta Johnson, Amanda Moore, Salise Hughes, Davis Limbach, Aaron Wendel, Sarah Jane Lapp, Clyde Petersen and Webster Crowell!
Here are the details:
Naked City Brewery
8564 Greenwood Ave N
Seattle, WA 98103
Wednesday February 1st, 8:00PM
FREE
Keep up to date with SEAT (Seattle Experimental Animation Team) stuff through the SEAT FB page:
http://www.facebook.com/experimentalanimation
First off, let me just say, there is a TON of animation showing at the Children’s Film Festival (Jan 26-Feb 5 at the NW Film Forum). There are 11 shorts programs, organized by themes (click here for the full schedule). I’ve gone through and sorted out which programs have the most stop-frame animation (whether dawn or puppets) rather than live-action or computer animation:
If you’re really into drawn animation, there are two shorts programs that seems to be pretty much comprised of this:
Fire and Ice: New Animation from Russia (Jan 28 at 3pm, Feb 4 at 3:30pm, 51 minutes): This is a program of 9 shorts, none older than 2002. All seem to be drawn, except for this one which is told with buttons (!):
and Fright Delight (Jan 29 at 1:30pm, Feb 1 at 7pm, Feb 4 at 5:30pm, 67 minutes): Scary films for ages 9 and up.
If you’re more into stop-motion with objects and puppets rather than drawn, there is a program for little little kids called Touch My Heart: Gentle Films on the Big Screen (Jan 27 at 11am, Feb 5 at 11am) that has a knitted film, one made with cardboard, and a few other stop-motion.
Birds of a Feather (Jan 29 at 1pm, Feb. 4 at 11am) also has many stop-motion and drawn shorts.
These are the ones with the MOST stop-motion, but truth be told, every single shorts program (11 altogether!) has a least one or two stop-motion animations. So go out and catch them!
The other big animation is the opening night feature, and here is my rant about that:
I’m torn. I absolutely loved Micel Ocelot‘s ‘Princes et Princesses‘ when I first stumbled upon it in my university library seven or eight years ago. It was a fun film, a short film, but a long one, if I recall correctly, composed of vignettes of a girl and a boy play-acting different fairy tales. It was made in a Lotte Reiniger style of back-lit cut-outs, and they were ingenious, and moved beautifully. Then Ocelot made ‘Azur et Asmar‘ a computer animated feature that echoed his two dimensional cut-out style.
It was ok. Not great. There were some fun moments, but overall I found the story went downhill two thirds of the way through and I was disappointed with the animation. What a waste, I thought! Surely he has now learned that he should not have strayed from the simplicity and grace of his stop-motion technique! Alas, that was not to be. His latest film is called ‘Tales of the Night‘ (Les Contes de la Nuit) and it will open the Children’s Film Festival at the Northwest Film Forum tomorrow (Jan 26th) at 7PM.
From what I can tell, it seems to be very much inspired by his short Princes et Princesses, except it focuses on one fairy tale and is longer. He is using computer animation to closely imitate his stop-motion technique, and maybe the restriction of the having the figures silhouetted will reign in the temptation to go CG-crazy. But you decide! I’ve included below clips or trailers from all three films.
Princes et Princesses
Azur et Asmar
Tales of the Night
The screening of the Inter-Action program of animated shorts tonight at Naked City Brewery has been postponed until Wednesday, Feb 1st due to snow. Here is the Facebook event with the new date and all the info: http://www.facebook.com/events/160042350771166/
Still from Plain Face (2011)
Starting February 2nd you’ll be able to see Plain Face, Tess Martin’s animated short that premiered at SIFF in May, on the big beautiful monitors of 4Culture’s media gallery, e4C. A reception at 4Culture will mark the launch on February 2nd, and is part of Pioneer Square’s First Thursday Art Walk. Stay tuned for more details about this event, but in the meantime, mark your calendars! Plain Face will be screening on the monitors (on rotation with others artists’ work) for a full year! Check out this video about e4C where Tess talks about one of her previous pieces, A Moment’s Reverie, that was on there from 2009 to 2010:
http://vimeo.com/9335656
Did you miss the Inter-Action program when it screened at the NW Film Forum on June 16th 2011? Now’s your chance to see all 12 locally-made animated short films for free (!) at the Naked City Brewery in their monthly film night, Third Wednesday with Northwest Film Forum. Here is the Facebook event.
And here are the deets:
Naked City Brewery
8564 Greenwood Ave N
Seattle, WA 98103
Wednesday January 18th, 8:00PM
FREE
Program is 75 minutes and includes Tess Martin‘s short Plain Face, Stefan Gruber‘s Both Worlds, Drew Christie’s The Man Who Shot the Man Who Lincoln, and Bruce Bickford‘s The Comic That Frenches Your Mind!
This last one WILL blow your mind, guaranteed (wait, I didn’t mean it like that….)
Not to mention shorts by the talented Britta Johnson, Amanda Moore, Salise Hughes, Davis Limbach, Aaron Wendel, Sarah Jane Lapp, Clyde Petersen and Webster Crowell!
Keep up to date with SEAT stuff through the SEAT FB page:
http://www.facebook.com/experimentalanimation
Tess Martin’s animated short Plain Face is screening at the Victoria Film Festival on February 11th as part of the Animation Alive! shorts program. I will be attending! I’ve never been to Vancouver Island before, so this should be fun.