10 days

Last week I animated using blobs of acrylic paint, scraping tools and paper and I am happy with the outcome. I also filmed some b-roll at the Vipassana center and the surrounding area (shots of cows, barns, and the like). My project is coming together, and I am looking forward to rough cuts on Thursday and Friday! I can’t wait to see what everyone has created.

I’m returning to the Northwest Vipassana Center for an old students’ weekend in a few hours. I am bringing my camera, and hopefully I’ll get some nice time-lapses on Sunday. Old students’ weekend is when meditators meet other meditators, help in the garden and with various tasks at the center, and meditate. I look forward to returning to the center. I hope everyone has a nice weekend in Olympia, and I will be back on Sunday.

I animated quite a lot this week, and I plan on animating with sand next week. I watched Doing Time, Doing Vipassana, which was really really good and touching. It’s about a Vipassana center in a prison in India.

Ruth was kind enough to let me sit in her Image and Sequence class for the 35 mm direct animation workshop with Stephanie Maxwell. It was a lot of fun, and it’s sort of addicting. I captured some nice stuff (using the lunchbox and Maxwell’s projector) that I will use for my nightmare sequence. 

In other news, I stayed up all night learning Anime Studio through tutorials. This is also really addicting! I spent an hour or so creating a swimming octopus that raps. This is obviously unrelated to my project, but it was entertaining. My intention was to animate in Anime Studio for this project, but now that I think about it, I don’t know if it will fit with my rotoscoping. I’m not going to rule it out, though. I may include more direct animation than I had anticipated. It’s just so cool!

It may be when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.
WENDELL BERRY

This week I finished writing my voice-over, and I’m going to re-record it soon. I’m almost done storyboarding everything. There still are a few details I may change in the voice over. I met with Sally yesterday and she helped me a lot. I hope to see some of you at Shot to the Face tonight! Love!