When I made the couch video there were two versions: one with Jim Dine’s poem that I eventually released and this one combining some Zipperhead whiteboard animations using this song I wrote with Natalie. Finally got around to uploading the alternate take for Valentine’s day. My ex referred tot he song as : caterwalling, but I still like it and want to recored it properly some day.
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double_u UU sends cards for dead Mexican Kings my way and it made me think how much I’m playing cards these days. I’ve been spending a lot of time editing Cage with Dave S. and that feels like a poker game half the time. I’ve also been trying to storyboard Willoughby which feels like a card game too, in the sense of discreet rectangle pictures laid out like solitaire. More hands to come!
While in a four month fever dream of animating Pain, I also shot some flip vid (much was lost in a tragic language change to French in my interface, but that is a different story) of goings on at Frost, etc. There is some Jillian Salik, some comedy nght, so x box, some editing Cage, and the world premiere of Pain in the garden on an airflow screen. ]]>
We were editing Cage, when all of a sudden the kids decided to inflate a screen and show movies. It was a nice opportunity to see “Pain” projected with big speakers for the first time!. ]]>
An Animation for Donald Johnson’s song Pain. I made over 2,000 individual images iin Photoshop in an attempt to make something like a handmade digital animation. I call the characters cogs. They aren’t cats and they aren’t dogs and they aren’t people. They are part of a narrative machine.
Song written and sung by Donald Johnson
Music arranged, played, and produced by Javier Hernandez-Miyares
Art and Animation by Alex Itin
Maybe thole thing was an excuse to make an image that reminds me of some old paintings from 90’s? Anyway I actually enjoyed and am enjoying the big climax, as it were.
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I’m into the last notes of the video for “Pain”. The characters walk off stage a little like an old vaudeville comedy team. They are sort of based on me ex’s little dogs who are a little like a comedy team in their antics too. They’ve been running around my feet the whole time. Pain, isn’t it adorable?
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The last cog in the machine.
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Moby meets the Court of the Crimson King.
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Donyo meet Peshyo ]]>
Plop plop fizz fizz, the snowball melts back to the skull and sinks into the briny depths.
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A rolling stone, gathers no grapes.
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Or actually a dislodged skull turned snowball rolling down a mountain…
Below the tree line and into the valley below. ]]>
Melt
SnowYo ]]>
I think this might be a small ode to Hemmingway’s Snows of Killimangaro? Anyway the gag seems to be working and the moral is keep your eyes ahead of you.
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PAX
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That was a lot of petals to move. Now to master flight.
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She says, “What’s that ugly thing? Are you making cherries?” And I think, “No I’m destroying the world.” But I say, “Well yeah, I guess it could be a cherry tree. Do you suppose I could draw Donyo as a bird? A little thing with wings and a human head?” “That sounds ugly,” She says. “I think it will be funny,” I say. So tune in later this week to see the flying cog.
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Check Mate now King me.
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This clock is happy and noon and midnight.
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I saw a singing god eat the world and then suddenly I couldn’t see him, or hear him, or anything until I see a singing god…
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Just trying to draw the world on a Friday night.
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Going through the paces.
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Things are looking up… or rising from the dirt… or something
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Things go round and round…
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Spain went to New York.
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I had wanted the animation I’m working on to go to the dark space of NYC in the sixties that my dad sort of played with in the seventies out of Paul Klee I think… mixed with the rising minimalism and Joseph Albers, however the nice thing about a consecutively drawn animation is that other things happen in the chess game of self against time and space. Spain showed up with it’s arenas of Roman smiles. Plans foiled. Blood spilled. Moving on.
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Cold and faceless
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Time rocks on.
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The cog paces the screen.
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The head in the clouds, or rather the head becomes the a cloud. Another from from the animation I’m playing with.
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well here it is: two months turned to two minutes talking about two years, she tells me. Well there is the words of the great painter Jim Dine and the music of the great Javier Hernandez-Miyares and the a special shout out to Steve Pacia and always Ponyo and Leo and 1000 other scans…. ummm… next. ]]>
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all alone animating a crowd… theraputic or maddening. ]]>
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a day so warm and lovely that I saw bulbs fooled into thinking it was spring. ]]>
chair ]]>
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Spent New Year’s Eve with myself this year and erasermating…. however the new year calls for a new page (particularly as the last one was beginning to fall apart and ripple under the strain… so here is page one of the new year dreamer…. he has since morphed into a bad aproximation of one of my dad’s litho’s from the probably the 50’s…. but that was after midnight so it don’t count in the court of the crimson king. ]]>
another frame in the couch sleeper animation, but suddenly the scanner is on the fritz (or rather fritzier than it was already). Could this be the end? ]]>
I’m drawing and erasing an animation. Thought I’d share a couple of frames. The top one is the last state of the first page of paper, the head is exactly where I’m up to right now. ]]>