Don Carlson Productions

Full Frontal Confession and Praise for I-MOCKERY

2012-01-19T06:53:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

You know that site that attacked me awhile back? Well, they did not put me up to this, but I was in the wrong to begin with. I trolled them in 2006, not knowing who they were. I was immature at the time and had no direction in life. I just wanted to be a punk rocker and had that attitude of invincibility. Most people go through this phase in high school, but I was a quiet nerd in high school and didn't really start living until my early 20's.

So, I basically vexed this poor site for several weeks, and then disappeared. Years later, I found a link in my Pram Maven results on Google and asked to have it removed because it was negative and while it started out that way, it had become something positive when it became a channel on Youtube. Being a parody site, they refused. I can't really blame them; after all, I was an asshole on first impression; why should they help me? So in attempt to fit in and lessen their negative perception of me, I tried to be funny. Not sure if that worked or not, but my brand of humor blends the surreal and profane with reality (as anyone who has seen my films knows). I don't always give a sidelong wink to the audience to let them know what is true and what isn't. I guess I thought it was obvious.

Anyway, Pram Maven was always a character I created after high school to help me overcome my shyness, and I thought that being mean and obtuse was the way to be liked because I saw it working for other guys (The jerk always got the girl, what was up with that?). What I mean by "obtuse", at least in my case, is being subversive and confusing for the fun of it. - thinking that this somehow translated to being funny and entertaining. What I didn't realize is that when I just relax a little, I am naturally funny. There's no need to force it. But... On I-Mockery, I was playing at having them think I was dangerous because they knew where I lived and I was afraid they would come over.

Well nothing happened but a bunch of name-calling. I'm sorry for what I did, and I don't troll anymore. I'm also gentler with my comments. That is to say, I've been policing myself. to make sure Id on't rub anyone the wrong way- on purpose or by accident. Regardless, I-Mockery did a great thing for me. They taught me to be myself and not take that "other self" so seriously.

Anyway,

I-Mockery, while great at parody and mockery, also happen to be FANTASTIC video game designers. I have to say that gets my respect.

Their game, "Abobo's Big Adventure" is the summary of every Nintendo kid's favorite games all rolled into one. It's fun, completely random, and full of memorable characters from Double Dragon, Punch Out, Super Mario Brothers... The list goes on. Incredible game, and easy to play but hard to beat (which is true to the way Nintendo games always were).

Here's a preview:

I don't know how I ever took this site seriously. It is straight-up hilarious! Abobo from Double Dragon shooting the guy from Yo! Noid? Abobo as Megaman? Who thinks of that but a loving parodist?

You can play the game here.

My favorite part was when you get to play Punch Out as the BAD guy and you're punching the good guy. I would never think of that! You might as well call I-Mockery the "ironic opposite" of the internet. They take things that are loved by the public and put them through a funhouse mirror. I'm not sure what the opposite of "Don Carlson, the racist animator from Portland, hates Mexicans" would be, other than "Don Carlson, the animator who likes people of all races, loves Mexicans (and especially their clay!)".

or, "Don Carlson (Pram Maven) is a homeless criminal" could actually mean "Don Carlson (Pram Maven) is a law-abiding citizen who lives in a house".

or, "Don Carlson (Pram Maven) is a stalker" could = "Don Carlson (Pram Maven) is being stalked".

...but "Pram Maven is an idiot" still stands. I WAS an idiot for underestimating the great site that is I-Mockery. While I wasn't trying to be liked or come off as anything but a poor man's Marilyn Manson on their forums, it's nothing like how I am in real life, which is meek and approachable.

I know there are people who will read this who will say "LET IT GO, MAN", but I can't let something go when I have done something wrong. I always default to honesty and an embarassing level of humility. The air had to be cleared of my stinky assumption farts.

Beeswax clay update + music

2012-01-15T10:59:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

Big update today-

After toiling for several weeks trying to design my own beeswax-based modeling clay from scratch, there was success! The clay is very similar to Van Aken, although it contains no petroleum products. The exact ingredients I won't divulge, in case there is interest in bringing this clay to market- although, I have to bow down to Van Aken International's expertise. At this point, my clay doesn't improve with age, but it is richly pigmented and the colors stay in the clay.

Also figured out how to modify Van Aken Claytoons to be very close to the consistency of Pongo. That took a bit of experimentation, but I was amazed at how close it was.

In the process of discovery, I'm finding that crumbly clay generally does not happen because there is too much of a harder wax component, but because there is too much powder. This is an old hypothesis, but the latest batch finally theorized it. Two ways you can tell if the formula will be crumbly while still in the pot- it's hard to melt and just drips down in waves like a candle, or...it is very thick at a higher temperature. Beeswax will be thinner the hotter it is, so this is a good way to tell when you've put too much powder in the clay.

I used to like to start with the wet ingredients first and then add the hard stuff, but I found that gets all over your hands and sticks like glue and is unpleasant. Now I start with the wax and powder, because those are the two most important constituents- without wax, the clay can not hold shape, and without powder it does not have any body, opacity, or the ability to knead it without it sticking to your hands.

I'm not quite ready to market the clay but getting pretty close...At this point it is having trouble flexing without breaking, so I think It needs more of the grease I'm using. I've noticed that too much of this sort of grease does not necessarily make the clay really sticky. Too much oil, on the other hand... Oh, man. Its stickiness becomes like microscopic pieces of double sided tape. Eugh!

One thing I should add is that the beeswax does not just come in one grade, so any type you get is going to yield a harder or softer (and differently proportioned formula). The grade I'm now using is pharmaceutical USP bleached white beeswax. It's the type used in lip balms. You may have to make a few phone calls to find it... Like the other ingredients in this stuff, no one told me what to use and I had to figure it all out.

Alright, so that's the clay...

Lately I've been having a blast getting back into doing my second love, which is music. My quality of life drastically changed when I bought the light version of FL Studio. It just transformed everything about the way I record and the ease of it all, as well as put it right on the beat every time. Sync is super important when recording and editing a recording session; having anything come in too early or late on the drum tracks will break the whole song. On guitar, however, you can get away with being a little early or late (and sometimes you will have to, if the part you're doing will loop back around and start over again).

Acid Music studio has a cool feature I don't remember in older versions, where you can use the mouse wheel to magnify the part of the track you're working on. I just plop my cursor down where the track should begin and maybe place a marker there, then drag the end of the track until the start of the waveform lines up with the edge of the marker. In this way, it becomes possible to record directly from the drum machine using the headphone output and re-looping those files once in the computer. In my experience, it always sounds a little better on the drum machine though. I wish there were some way to create a loop and then bring it in via USB, but alas there is no USB jack on this DM. That's not a dealbreaker, and there's probably one on the higher end units. I'm poor, so I just use whatever I can afford.

One thing I'd like to be able to do is program FL Studio through the drum machine, using it as a MIDI trigger. Have not figured out how to do that yet... It would save time because of the direct connectivity and interaction with FL.

I'll leave you with this song I composed the other day while digging through a box of old lyrics.

Artist: Sunday Friend
Song: Something Fell
Album: Love Cycle Complete

It's the prequel to "All Is Well", I suppose you could say, which is on another lyric sheet I need to blow the dust off of. Both are in 3/4, which creates a sort of jaunty, folksy feel to the rhythm.

A pro studio could record and mix it better, but I'm pretty happy with the sounds I'm getting. Never thought I'd enjoy singing harmonies so much!
Also got the guitar cleaned and restrung, and found that if you layer a bunch of different versions of an amp simulator plugin, you can make the guitar sound like it's going through stacks. Using the electric guitar for the bass lines is also improved with an amp simulator and some EQ, but I've found you can even create a vocal mic placement effect by running the mic through the same plugin, with overdrive turned almost all the way down. Pretty nifty!

Because of a super wonderful friend I now have my own website, something I've been wanting for a long time (thank you! Best present ever! :)

2012-01-12T10:41:00.000-08:00

TWO songs are recorded and mixed for the forthcoming album from Sunday Friend!The track listing is as follows: 1. Decency2. StatueThat may not be the final order the tracks will appear in, but it's a start. The album is a 14-song LP and is heavily influenced by disco and grunge. It's a freakin' cool combination, if you ask me! Misery you can dance to. There are a lot of 2-part harmonies on this one. Like previous efforts, it is a concept album, this time about love and heartbreak. I've been sitting on it for almost a decade, but been practicing the songs for about that long, just didn't have to way to record it the way it sounded in my head.The final album title I've settled on is Love Cycle Complete.I have not been this excited about making music since I first started. All of the software works together as a unit and makes the whole process very uncomplicated.This has been a great year so far, just fantastic! People who don't even listen to this genre of music liked it. It's not particularly angry sounding, which is a relief after narrowing my audience to people who listen to that kind of music all these years.

2012-01-10T08:06:00.000-08:00

Decided against the new blog. I can just rename this one... I don't know why I am so indecisive, but it drives me nuts. OCD or something. Alright, so anyway, I've put up a new Youtube channel and we'll see how it goes. This time it has nothing to do with Pram Maven in the name- I'm trying to let the work speak for itself.Also previewed a song from the new album for one of our friends in stop motion and he gave some very positive feedback, so maybe it will be a single. That's all for now, just recording and playing with a drum machine at the moment.

2012-01-04T09:42:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, and Happy New Year!

2012 is gonna be awesome. I've already made a few new friends and hope to be working on a local project soon. The clay stuff is great, gotten going on cranking out some music as well. It's not the usual sound, but something a little less stompy than previous efforts.

I've thought about my New Years resolution- to let the work speak for itself. You really do need to do that, or there's no way to ever tell if it's any good or not. So, I'm going to keep the public commentary to a minimum this year and focus on making stuff.

*yawn*

Hope you all had a good New Year, I ate a lot of cookies and watched superhero movies. For some reason I've been getting into those lately- and Amazon's pay-per-stream quality isn't that bad. So far I've seen Defendor, Kick Ass, and Unbreakable. Still need to rent Scott Pilgrim VS The World and- hmmmmm, maybe that's it. The fact is, not one of these movies failed to entertain. The writing on all of them was good, the casting choices were excellent, and the storytelling is tight. I just think it's interesting that there aren't as many regular guy super heroes in the movies as there are characters who can shoot fire out of their eyes. There is something to a normal person donning a cape- the odds of him not surviving go up like a crazy and it feels all the more real and gritty.

By the way, I'm starting a new blog but will leave this one up for posterity. I just feel so inspired that this idea and approach needs its own name. If you would like to follow it, the new blog will soon be active at squishymation.blogspot.com

Hope to see you there!

"Professor" Don teaches wax chemistry!

2011-12-24T08:15:00.001-08:00

Just to get this out of the way- I didn't go to school and get a Master's degree and all that, and I am not seriously calling myself a professor. But, for the purposes of this blog, I AM a professor, and I went to college for 20 years and have doctorates in every field of study but Modern Tap.

Alright, let's get on with it...

There are rules when mixing waxes and oils. This is how I remember it:

Rock: Paraffin
Paper: Petrolatum
Scissors: Mineral oil

(arranged by molecular weight as well as functionality)

The main principle here is "like dissolves like". That means you can't smooth a firm wax with mineral oil. You have to use whatever it is made of, but a slightly softer grade. So, stikki wax ("paper") softens paraffin ("rock"), paraffin thickens and hardens oil ("scissors"), and mineral oil softens stikki wax ("paper")

To get a sculpting clay you have to first soften the paraffin with petroleum jelly, let it cool, and check its flexibility. Then you add oil to soften it and make it even more flexible. Then you add chalk to make it less sticky (I've seen glycerin used in some recipes as well-perfect lubrication for that sticky wax).

You could think of modeling clay like candy: You start with a lollipop, smash it into little pieces, and melt it. Then you combine that with taffy, then corn syrup, and finally white flour. That should actually work as an edible candy clay...In theory, at least; hard candy is sticky, taffy is sticky but softer than hard candy, corn syrup is sticky but softer than taffy, and flour is a thickener and removes tackiness. For people with Celiac disease, you can substitute the white flour with rice flour. It would be interesting to try this, I need to pick up some rice flour because it is needed in another clay recipe, in which the rice flour ads more volume and body to the mixture.I have some suckers I can sacrifice to this experiment... The only thing I don't have is taffy and corn syrup...If you guys want to try it, here is the ratio of ingredients:

(percentage of recipe by weight)

Hard: 40% ...purpose: holds shape
Sticky : 5% ...purpose: ductility, viscidity
Liquid: 5% ...purpose: softener, glidant
Powder: 50% ...purpose: filler, inadhesive

This ratio may differ depending on the type of recipe and molecular weight of the different ingredients within it. Not all consistencies between similar ingredients are created equal. For example, hard candy is going to be lighter weight than a big bag of flour. I guess that's the whole point, though- it takes a LOT of powder to counter the stickiness of three ingredients that bond together. Without the flour, it would be like glue.

2011-12-23T20:39:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

2012 is gonna be a banner year for both music and animation on this blog.

First things first: I got the clay just the way I want it. It's so simple, it's silly.

Basically, you mix the Van Aken Claytoons with stikki wax. I started doing this about two years ago, but stopped because of the issue of not knowing how to smooth it. My tools stuck to the waxier clay.

Well, one thing you can do is add a small amount of paraffin. That reduces tackiness, but could make the clay brittle. The formulas are pretty sensitive to becoming off-balance.

What I found to work for both smoothing the clay with a brush and smoothing it with tools, is 100% petroleum jelly. At first, I was wondering why it would smooth it and then it hit me- both petroleum jelly and stikki wax are made of microcrystalline wax (just different hardnesses). The reason you use mineral oil to smooth modeling clay is because it has a lot of petroleum jelly in it. Mineral oil thins petroleum jelly, Using that logic, I found that petroleum jelly thins microcrystalline wax. To get rid of fingerprints, you only need a tiny amount of petroleum jelly on your brush. So, there's that.

Now, the brush you use to smooth modeling clay with is important. I thought nylon was a good choice, but when I talked to a painter today he informed me that the difference between nylon and Taklon brushes is the nylon bristles are going to be slightly rough. You can't see it, but the reason for this is that nylon brushes are designed to carry paint. The rough structure of the bristles allows them to do this. The probelm is, nylon bristles are too rough for modeling clay. However, there is a solution:

Taklon. Taklon bristles are very slick, almost like glass. With them, you get almost no brush strokes, and they glide across the clay surface, mending it instead of tearing it up.

Also started making music again, after studying the way my older software worked.

So, I'm excited! It will be a new year soon, and everything's in place for a high creative output in 2012.

2011-12-19T12:46:00.000-08:00

I'm not having much luck getting clay to stick together, at least pending the acquisition of some more coconut oil. Even so, I've been sculpting anyway and waiting to hear about the Jovi, which I still think could make a big difference in clay animation.

I was thinking that since there are so many Latino speciality stores in my area, and given that this is a Mexican/Spanish clay, maybe one of them already has it, or could get it ordered. That would be great!

So...Do you guys remember Sugru? I think I might have posted about it awhile back, it's a silicone clay. Some discussion was had on SMA awhile back about whether or not it would be good for animation, but was determined to be too stiff. However, someone else recently figured out how to make their own version of it, out of silicone bathroom caulking and cornstarch. Interesting how cornstarch keeps coming up...I was using that to make clay less sticky when it had too much micro wax in it.

The homemade recipe is probably not going to be as firm as Sugru, but it its curing time can be adjusted, and it's more flexible, which is what every animator looks for. It will be interesting if someone attempts a puppet with Oogoo. I would do it, but I'd be worried about the fumes. Then again, I've played with silicone latex caulking, so maybe not. The neat thing is that silicone can be colored with linseed oil-based paints. I don't think acrylic would work, but it's nice to know that tinting is not so difficult if you don't have powdered pigments.

2011-12-12T06:41:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

Jovi wrote to say that their products do not contain soy or gluten. If or when I do figure out what's in the clay, I'm not going to post it, but this is a clue and I'm closer to a recipe that should work . I was right about the powder, just have to figure out the oil and wax constituents.

In the meantime, I've been playing with the Van Aken and finding that mineral oil is too heavy and seems to separate the powder from the clay. Baby oil with aloe and vitamin E is working much better to smooth it, especially the newer packages. This is the oil I used on the somewhat cleaner final shots of Blue Alien Summer. I think the aloe in the oil keeps the powder in the clay from sticking to the brush. When I was using mineral oil, the brush kept getting clogged and deposited tiny balls of powder all over the surface.

A couple other things: if clay gets too oily and soft during animation, it's actually the heat from the lights, not the oil that is making it too soft. Once that happens, you can brush some talc on it and you'll get a firm, dry surface to work with again. Chalk also works, but talc is easier to brush away. If you don't want soft clay in the first place, just use fluorescent lighting.

When the clay is too crumbly, adding petroleum jelly into to the mix will make it stick together better. You will want to counter this with talc, because it can get pretty sticky. Some softer grades of micro wax will make it even stickier and you'll need more powder.

I don't really know what role the oil has in clay. There are some recipes that don't mention oil, just wax, powder, and grease. Mixing oil into a crumbly batch doesn't help, because the crumbliness is a sign that there is too much powder or wax, and not enough grease. So when your plastilina or Claytoons gets crumbly on ya, add petroleum jelly.

If you try to make your own clay, too much petroleum jelly and powder and not enough wax will also make it crumbly. I wasn't expecting that!

So... Another script written, this time it's interesting enough to follow through on. It's about prejudice and obesity, but with the roles reversed. First it's twisted, then it's more twisted- but you can blame social conditioning and human attraction for that. The ending is very satisfying with a good moral, something that isn't taught enough, given the number of shallow people walking around. It's also based in part on a true story, and will be my first foray into animating with Jovi clay. To get used to it, I'm going to try that 11 Second Club thing first.

AN OPEN LETTER TO NORTH AMERICAN CLAY COMPANIES

2011-12-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Manufacturers of modeling clay in the United States,

(Some words have been bolded so you can skim this and still get the general idea.)

Here's the pitch- My name is Don Carlson and I am one of many artists based in Portland, Oregon. I am looking for an eco-friendly modeling clay in stores in the United States as an alternative to the greasy, sticky, and heavily pigmented clay already offered here. So far in the two years I've searched and waited, I have been unable to find any.

Many companies outside of the United States sell a vegetable-based modeling clay called "plastilina" (Jovi , Giotto Patplume, Chenille Crafts Alpino), but none of those clays are available in the United States in many colors, much less on the shelves of craft stores. That's a shame, because these clays are very lightweight, which lowers the shipping costs . The low weight factor alone would be extremely popular with clay animators, sculptors, and illustrators and the combination of qualities unique to vegetable based clay would spark a resurgence in American clay animation. The low cost of manufacturing the vegetable-based clay with readily available, organic ingredients would allow for a lower price per pound at both cost and retail levels. The softness of the clay would make it easy for children to mix by hand and the color-safe dyes would make their parents happy.

I see an unfilled niche here...Why are U.S. clay companies slow to fill it while companies in Spain, Mexico, and Italy are cashing in on the Eco-friendly art craze?

My goal is to get something similar to Jovi... but made in the U.S.A.

Would you be interested in formulating a vegetable-based clay in, say, 20 colors? It would sell like hotcakes in this Eco-friendly, green-minded country! I know that clay animators would buy a ton of it...Many stop motion artists around the country stopped using clay in the mid-90's because it's so greasy and the pigments come off on their hands. They just got sick of it after awhile, and many developed some form of cancer from standing too close while mixing it in a double boiler. With vegetable-based clays that use plant dyes to color them, none of these problems are present and it leads to a wonderful sculpting and animating experience (and kids love it!) The consistency is wonderfully waxy and smooth...The most consistently smooth clay I've ever played with. I've never had it go crumbly on me.

I suggested the eco clay idea two years ago to a clay factory in California, but they didn't seem interested. Since then, more companies have cropped up (I found one in China) and with their versions of the "vegetable plastilina". Maybe now the company I spoke to would be interested, especially with everything going green and the FDA regulating the ingredients that can be used (believe me, they won't let clay be made of petroleum, which is not a renewable resource because it cannot be exhausted, if they decide that oil-based clay is bad for the environment)!

I'm probably thinking a little bit in the future here, but I see a very big need for Earth-friendly modeling clay coming. If you're the first in the United States to jump on it, you could make a mint. I would try making the stuff myself, but know nothing about chemistry and can't find even a generic recipe for eco clay so I don't even know what's in it. Usually the MSDS .pdf gives some clue, but I found nothing specific.

As an animator speaking for all clay animators in the U.S., we need a clay we can rely on, so I'm more or less pleading for an alternative to petroleum-based clay!

Best Wishes,

Don "think outside the wrapper" Carlson

2011-12-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

Now, the bad news. Every block of Van Aken I bought dated "2011" would not melt in the double boiler. It became the consistency of cake frosting, and then it started to smoke, but no liquid state was achieved at 150 degrees as it claims on the packaging.

Previous packages from other years didn't have this problem until I noticed it in 2009. It is a recent thing that started sometime around then. Thankfully, the issue can be tracked by date because every pack has the year it was made printed on it (not unlike wine, really).

I am worried that this problem is the result of changing ingredients in the clay and that it will never be what it once was- a great clay for animation that could be melted and mixed like paint. Unfortunately, there are no other options for multicolored clay used in animation in the entire United States. I have looked and I'd make my own, but I don't know what ingredients to use or the ratio that results in the best clay (although I can get very close). Sargent Art, which I had banked so heavily on, is not carried locally, so that's out. The only option I have is Van Aken, and if I can't find older dates of it, I can't use it. At the moment, I'm looking into Newplast, which is not designed to be melted. While I will miss that feature, Newplast gets high marks from Aardman, who made the brand famous. I am hoping it will solve my clay problem. It's not going to be cheap, though, and having to special-order clay direct from the factory in the UK is inconvenient. Even so, I think it is a worthwhile option, but wish someone would import Newplast, given that it is the most sought-after animation clay in the world.

I think it's important to stress the relationship between product and purpose. If the product does not meet the needs of the purpose, the purpose ceases to be. It's kind of interesting that the popularity of clay animation in the United States dwindled around the time that Avalon, Leisure Clay, and Pongo disappeared. Pongo was waxy and held up best under lights, Avalon could be used to harden it, and Leisure was the original modeling clay that was used in the first films at Vinton's.

In other news, someone recently purchased a struggling clay company and last I checked with them, it's only available in one color. Before the company went under, the clay was offered in twelve colors. The more I see the options dwindle, the harder I'm going to work to make my own clay. The recipe I worked out is original, and just happened by chance while trying different things. In other words, I got lucky while messing around in the lab... So if anyone wants to join me and develop my own brand of clay, let me know. Especially if you have money to fund it with. I'm going to need a factory warehouse if I'm going to do this right.

2011-11-27T10:15:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving was fun. I had WWWWWAYYYYY too many Swedish Pancakes (actually, more like crepes in the way they're prepared) and that was just lunch. Come dinner time, which was four hours later, I was still feeling stuffed. Somehow I managed to cram some turkey and gravy in my (pan)cake hole.

Thanksgiving night, I saw "Happiness Is A Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown" with my dad. We both thought it was very funny and enjoyed it, which is awesome because it's brand new, and new things tend not to be as good as the original (that's one person's opinion, anyway, based on the success of movie sequels). I was extremely impressed with this one, though. It stayed true to the Peanuts characters from the 60's-era comic strip, and the music was done by one of my favorite composers of all time, Mark Mothersbaugh (who also scored the Adventures in Wonderland TV show as well as the Claymation Easter special and Brain Donors). The man is a wizard on keyboards and has a style no one else can match for weirdness and originality.

The morning after Thanksgiving, I woke up with a headache and took two Tylenol PM, and was out like a light just after my mom's famous pizza (no one makes it better, I'm tellin' ya) and...fruit cake. Yeah, I know; who eats that stuff? It wasn't bad, I swear.

After that, the train ride back to Portland (conked out), the train ride back home (conked out there too) and the walk to work from there (conked out in the back room for a good hour- I was super early and needed just a smidge more sleep).

After work, I slept 12 hours, so I don't think my body thought it got enough rest, haha.

Health continues to improve, I don't know what I'm doing right, or if I'm just out of a flare, but I really have no complaints.

Oh wait, I forgot something. Let's back up to when I took the yellow line Max to Pioneer Place and weaved in and out of all the shoppers like Frogger.

I wanted to get some Beige/"Flesh" clay, having run out of it, and what to my wandering eyes (and legs) should appear, but...Not Art Media, which is the store that used to be in the usual place. No, Art Media is gone like it was never there. Instead, what I saw was a brand new Blick's!

YYYYYESSSSS!!!! I called them a year ago in Seattle to ask if they had any plans to put a store in Portland. They said "next year". Well, that's how fast this year must have went, because Dick Blick, in all their glory, are not only in Portland, but also Beaverton! I asked for one store and instead I got TWO!

With these changes have also brought in more variety (Blick's always had a great selection). The switch is not yet complete, but they'll soon have a lot more products that they had at the Seattle location and on the website. So I'm super excited and will hopefully be able to have clay shipped from the Beaverton store when I need a lot of it. That should keep the shipping costs down- clay is heavy stuff! So thank you, Blick's! You're too awesome and if you hadn't moved over here, I would have had go to live in Seattle just to be close enough to take advantage of your great selection and prices!

As for the Beige clay- it was made in 2011. I probably should have gone with the 1998 stuff, but was so tired I just grabbed the first thing I saw. It's great to know that Blick's has clay from that far back! Van Aken ages like fine wine. I'll definitely be back for more!

2011-11-24T14:45:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, Happy Thanksgiving! It's been awhile since the last post and things were looking pretty grim. I'm happy to say that the medicine has started working and I'm well enough to come back to creative stuff.

For awhile now I've been seeing something called the "11 Second Club" on Youtube. The way it works is you take a piece of audio that has been cleared for animation purposes, and you do a little scene to it. The sound is usually from a popular movie. What a great way to practice character acting in animation without devoting years of your life to a single project!

I thought the 11 Second Club was restricted to computer animation, but lately have seen some stop motion entries. This is something I'm looking forward to jumping into with both feet. It's a neat way to diversify your reel because every clip is completely different from the next or the one before it. This is a much easier approach than taking apart a personal short and hunting for the best shots to include on the reel. So, that's what I'm up to. Soon as I have the audio file for the next competition, I'm going to get going on it. Pretty cool how much you can do with only 11 seconds to work with.

It kind of reminds me of Stopmoshorts and the Animate Clay Challenges. As you know from previous blogs, I love animating to existing audio. You can get pretty crazy with it and it really gives you some good marks to hit in terms of performance. The animation can be as simple or complex as you want it. Because of the short screen time, I'm aiming for complex. That means a day or two for set building, a day to make the armature and sculpt the puppet, and a day to plan out the action... And then GOOOOOOOO TIIIIIIIIIME!!!! The actual animation will probably take about a week. I can't think of a better way to experiment and try different set designs and lighting setups. I never block the shot before going for it, so maybe 1 or 2 pop-thru's can be figured in too. It's good to know where you're headed before that final take. Having a plan gives you a blueprint you can kind of rough in and then fill out while animating. Since the audio provides a theme the story is already there- you just have to convey it. That's the fun part!

Chin up

2011-11-11T14:14:00.000-08:00

Went to the GI specialist today and she sat me down for a serious talk. She said that when she examined me, my stomach was thicker in places it shouldn't be. This can indicate a number of things, possibly even cancer. At the end of the month I'm going in for a colonoscopy in the hopes of ruling that out. The good news is that my diet does not have to be conformed or rigid to certain foods. She said I could eat whatever I want. The inflammation will be there no matter what, as well as whatever is making my stomach hard. Worse case scenario is surgery, and the best case is just being on this expensive medicine for the rest of my life. I'll take the good with the bad, but I really do not want cancer.

In the meantime, I'm just trying to sleep enough and not think about negative stuff.

2011-11-10T05:53:00.000-08:00

Doctor's appointment tomorrow, but I'm sick of talking about that. Instead, I want to get back into the creative mode.

I've been soaking in the hot bath for hours at a time (the only thing that makes my stomach feel good) and thinking about story. How do you convey a plot, beyond conflict? That's not an easy one because I've seen lots of great animation with a weak storyline and it was still very enjoyable. I've also seen weak animation with great story and that was just as much if not more so enjoyable.

Where is that happy balance between sculpting quality and story that makes a film work?

I'm not sure, but one obvious approach to storytelling is through narration. It seems to work better if you put everything in the past-tense. This comes from novels...The ones that take place in the present sound awkward. "Not sure what you're talking about", I say. Doesn't work for me. I said. Better. Putting it in the past establishes a distance between the reader and the characters. I think you really need that distance. It's like the difference between watching a movie and watching a soap opera. With the soap opera, there is no distance from the viewer. It looks like melodramatic reality TV or Saturday Night Live (neither of which I find funny). It's too NOW-ish to be convincingly unreal- or realistically unconvincing.

So, there's the first requirement for good story...Distance.

The second part, is what I would equate to how you write a joke: you start with the establishment of the situation and introduce the characters; the Setup. Given that I have more experience with songwriting than joke writing or storytelling, I might have gotten further confused by the fact that while a song has a beginning, middle, and end as the joke and film formats do, the song's chorus generally sums up the verses, and it's the bridge of the song that often explains both. It is possible, then, that while writing the story for Blue Alien Summer, I could have focused more on the "verses" of the film than the "chorus" and left the "bridge" out completely in the process.

So, how do you set up a storyline for a film or book? In the film, it's done in the Establishing Shot. A novel's equivalent of this is the Prologue, Preface, or Foreword.

The way cinematic storytelling differs from joke writing is that the middle part of a joke would be the ending of a film- the conclusion, in the latter's case, the punch-line in the former's. I think that messed me up a little because in trying to write a funny script, I got hung up on the visual and verbal gags. The story was only skeletal and got glossed over. I was essentially punching the storyline...out cold.

With non-humorous storytelling, the story is written with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Or, if you prefer, the introduction, the conflict, and the resolution (sometimes with a moralality lesson learned or taught by the central and/or supporting characters).

Telling a non-humorous story, I think, would be easier than writing a comedy, because the point of the conflict is clearer when it's not funny. The resolution of the conflict is usually its opposite, which makes it easier to put a satisfying end to the story. Of course, there are so many different ways to tell a story, with different styles of writing it and nuances unique to a particular author, not to mention many genres of story writing and cinematic direction and execution. I think the main thing is to quickly establish what's there, then explain why it's there and what its defects are- then ultimately fix what's wrong with it- or don't, and leave room for a sequel. I think some good rules to follow are the ones of journalism: "who, what, when, where, why (and how)". That way, you know who the story is about, what context it's in, when it happened, where it happened, what caused it to happen, and how it happened. That's the formula for a good story right there, isn't it? Now all you need is a second "how"- the "how to fix it".

In support of that, I think I want to try making a dramatic film with no attempt at humor in it... Get the story right... Then reintroduce the humor on a later film. Before I start on that, I want to get a better grasp of the basic principles of storytelling. If anyone knows of a good book or two they can recommend, I'll check it out. I've been slowly warming to the idea that good animation and funny happenings do not neccessarily add up to a satisfying film. Like cooking, you need a knowledge of all the ingredients and you have to know how to cook with them, what you shouldn't mix together, and how long to let it sizzle before you can make the dish palatable to the consume-r.

2011-11-03T00:22:00.000-07:00

Had the sigmoidoscopy, not the most pleasant thing ever, but no cancer was found so that's good. A few biopsies were done, which is where a little grabber arm thing tears a chunk off of your sigmoid colon (Hellraiser comparisons come to mind) and those were sent off to a lab somewhere, so the doctor is hoping that will give him some answers. Next up is the gastroenterologist, who is specialized in colitis, which is the inflammation of the sigmoid colon (in some cases it could also be the inflammation of other parts of the digestive tract as well).

I'm getting pretty good at avoiding the painkillers (they make me woozy), so I think it's a combination of eating bland foods (although I had some really delicious mashed potatoes and gravy and a pizza pocket which I may or may not regret tomorrow), and keeping on the medicine regimen.

Dropping weight like a fiend...I wish that would stop.

Because of the stomach nausea and cramps I'm going to see about filing for family medical leave at work. I don't know what else to do at this point. It doesn't make sense to go to work on this, at least while everything is inflamed. Doing that could make it worse.

I don't know what's next...Armed with saltine crackers and 7up, plus popsicles, Jell-O and yoghurt... I guess that's all you can do, right?

Also kind of curious if it's a bad idea to wash down the anti-inflamatory pills with 7-up. Haven't had any problems so far, in fact it made it easier to take the medicine for some reason (and I hate the taste of water). I just wonder if the 7-up could be disintegrating the pill before it gets to the colon to do its work.

2011-10-31T09:12:00.000-07:00

The ER visit was expensive and I am now in debt to the hospital. So if anyone has any paying audio work I could do, please don't hesitate to get in touch, it would mean so much.

Once in the ER I had my weight checked (it's steadily going down... Lost 5 pounds in the past week. I was already a thin 6'0, 154. Now I'm 149).

Then I sat in the waiting room for 3 hours, half awake and trying to stay positive to ward off the stomach cramps (which were like an animal that could sense any negative thought).

After that came the gown and bed, urine sample (more diarrhea), then the nurse started an IV. It took four tries. I joked that if I closed my eyes, I couldn't tell which arm it was in. Both arms are still bruised, but the hole the IV was in is black and blue around the edges with a raised bump near the elbow.

So I lay in the bed shivering (it was very cold in there, and the room was close to the exit) until the doctor came in and talked to me, told me what was going on, and put some medicine into the IV to settle my stomach (that was the best part, because the cramps were gone in a matter of seconds and never came back that bad again).

All told, I didn't get out of there ER until 9:00 PM (went in around 11:00 AM). The bill came to $250, which was a shock because I was told beforehand that it wasn't going to be more than the usual co-pay. So many people told me to go to the ER (including the advice nurse) that I think I was tricked into paying more for something that Urgent Care would have been able to take care. I was already barely scraping by...*sigh*

So the second biggest shock yesterday was that I don't have Ulcerative Colitis, which I'd been diagnosed with in 2007. I have Crohn's disease. That means that I have entered the world of hospitals, doctors, and nurses and will never know a life without them. A diagnosis of Crohn's is a life-changer, but it's not like I was active in sports or doing a lot of traveling. It changes some things, but mostly confirms what I already knew: I'll always be sick, and this is not going away. It can go into remission, but it can and will be as bad as it just was. That's kind of blighting...But with all that comes empathy for anyone else in the situation. I'm planning to join a support group for people who have this. Even so, I'm not making it the center focus of life. I can still write...Maybe it's time to work on a book.

In the meantime, I know some of the folks who have picked on me recently have medical problems as bad or worse than my own. I hope they find something to do that takes their mind off of it without taking their frustrations out on strangers. I know what it's like to lash out at people you don't know just because you aren't feeling good. While I don't do that anymore, I can see why some do it. It doesn't improve your symptoms, it just makes you forget about them for awhile. I'm finding that being kind to everyone you meet gives you the best of both worlds. If it weren't for my friend who drove me to the hospital (and later the train stop because the hospital was closed), I might not have gone yesterday. She is the shining example of the kindness that seems to radiate from a person who has been through far worse than this. She kept me calm throughout.

That's the kind of human I want to be; someone who helps people instead of hurting them.

2011-10-29T14:25:00.000-07:00

Geez, this was never supposed to be a medical blog... I'm embarassed that I have nothing new creatively to talk about.

Today was bad. Stabbing stomach pain for 10 seconds at a time, so bad I had to hold my breath, grunt, and slowly let it out. After ever time I'm nauseated, but don't have to throw up (and I've never thrown up once throughout this entire 11 day ordeal).

I don't think I can keep missing work for this, and I'm just going to bite the bullet tonight (got tomorrow off, so that's another day and a half to recuperate).

Sheesh! I'll stop whining, it must be getting annoying. Just know that whatever bad things I've done in life, I'm taking this gastrointestinal pain to mean that I'm paying for them in full.

2011-10-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

'Nother doctor appointment, 'nother diagnosis.

This time it's Gastritis, and possibly the worst pain I've ever been in. It feels like when you have a flexible tube pushed up in ya during a sigmoidoscopy...But the sensation is constant, mostly on the lower left side. Breathing in deeply also has a sharp, pricking sensation, dead center, just under where the ribs meet.

This is not fun, ladies and gentlemen. It's hard to even lie down. I have no idea what brought this on, but I can't wait to learn how to get rid of it and make it never happen again. My insides feel like they're being sliced up with a dull knife. Production has halted on Storytime II indefinitely (it wasn't very interesting anyway). I'm not sure what project is next, but I will for sure be healthy when I start on it. Until then, I'm just sleeping a lot and watching TV. Might even have to take a medical leave of absence at work. It does not appear that this is the sort of condition that gets better quickly. It came out suddenly and from out of nowhere...

2011-10-25T19:17:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, sorry I haven't updated more, I've got health problems. The autoimmune disease came out of remission and has spread to my stomach, which means that both that and my disgestive tract are inflamed.

I'm going to a specialty clinic as soon as possible to get a full diagnosis so my doctor can start treating this.

I think what brought this on was seeing that, no matter what name I posted under, no matter how much good I tried to do, someone made sure to humiliate me somewhere on Google under it.

A lesser man would strike back, and strike hard to punish these knuckleheads, but it's the testament to REAL character to let it go). It was just a prank, right? Similar to the George W Bush/massive failure Google bomb? None of this is anything more than name-calling and impersonation.

My spirit has forgiven them, I just wish my body would. I really don't see the humor in making someone physically ill.

Finally Learning Blender! day 1

2011-10-16T19:15:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,

As anyone who is a stop motion animator had always heard, "it is important to learn computer animation too" and I believe that to be an accurate statement. I've been watching some tutorials by an amazing Blender tutorial creator named Chad Allen on Youtube. He offers a fantastically easy to understand and follow (and transcribe) approach to learning Blender, and after watching only two of his videos, I now have a good idea of how Blender's user interface works. It is pretty simple if you remember that,

1: everything is laid out in an intuitive way with hotkeys almost always abbreviated to the first letter of what the key does (E for Extrude, etc.) 2. Blender is very hotkey centric, but what works scaling also works on rotation and moving as well.

I am transcribing all of his Back to Basics videos in Cliffs notes format and will be posting them along with the video links and much credit and gratitude to Mr. Allen for demystifying this complex program and teaching it in a way that an idiot like me could be taught.

As much as I enjoy clay and stop motion, I also love a new challenge, and at this point in my life, I think CG is just what the doctor ordered. What REALLY clinched it for me was seeing someone far younger instructing a Youtube audience how to model a breakable table in Blender. I figured, "if he can do it, by golly..."

Meanwhile: tomorrow I will pick up some Citrus Solv to see if it is a less aggressive solvent when smoothing clay and some oil paints to mix with the Ivory Van Aken to get my own colors. Also at some point I would like to try making some clay from scratch, but one thing at a time.
I've certainly got my work cut out for me, with stomach cramps and runs to the bathroom every few hours, so it hasn't been easy. I've had these symptoms for over 3 weeks and need to get in to see a doctor to find out what's wrong. Hopefully it's not anything too serious, but eating lots of soup and plenty of rest are at the top of the list!

2011-10-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, guess what?

I've been selected to test a new brand of clay! I love October, it's simply magical.

Also, solved the oil problem and the issue of clay coming off on the hands.

To fix that, blend Ivory colored Van Aken with whatever color you're having trouble with at a 1:1 ratio. You'll end up with a color that is fast. I did this with black and put some black eyebrows on an ivory colored character, then peeled the eyebrows off. No residue.

The oil thing was a little more tricky. I think the key to it is to avoid oil altogetheer. Using spoon tools, I've found that it's easier to control shapes, and it doesn't require any lubricant, so the clay stays whatever firmness you started with.

The leaching was a success, and it made the color I did about 50% more firm.

Beeswaxing...did not work so great. The issue wasn't so much stickiness as its tendency to crumble at room temperature. Boo! So I'm kind of finding that if you want a super hard clay, you really have to freeze it or at least cool it to 50 degrees.

Still have not gotten around to fixing BAS, but I am going to get some oil paints and try tinting a block of Ivory before I forget. Also might be blowing some dust off the old voice-acting career, so stay tuned for that too!

Ok, NOW leaching...

2011-10-06T02:24:00.000-07:00

I don't know what happened, but I got off work and just crashed for 16 hours. Had some interesting dreams, though. Anyway, I'm going to try to try to fit two days of experiments into one.

First up: the leaching (in progress). Awhile back, I exchanged much of the Claytoons for Plastalina because of the softness, so I didn't think I still had much left to work with. Awhile back Mike LeTendre sent me several pounds of Claytoons, which I just remembered in a top drawer above the drawers that hold scrap clay. So thanks to Mike I have enough.

Up next is bees-waxing and powdering some virgin clay, and cracking that NLE to see what can be done about the BAS story.

Leach Away!

2011-10-05T08:38:00.000-07:00

Today is the day. I'm rolling out some slabs of clay and smashing them between pieces of notebook paper. I don't know if the type of paper matters, but I'll set it aside and come back to it tomorrow. With luck, the too-soft Claytoons will be a bit firmer.

Also, not giving up on the issue of smoothing clay without using oil yet. There is a way to do it, I just know it. I want to say it has something to do with KY jelly, but there's still that troublesome shine which messes up the lighting. Maybe a stronger polarizer? Also, would it be possible to stack two to get twice as much polarization?

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I just haven't had anything interesting to photobraph lately. The whole process and all the testing and experimenting is pretty boring to anyone watching.

While the clay is being leached, I think I'm going to see if I can whittle BAS down a little. I think it could be made to make sense if I spent enough time fixing it. If cutting scenes doesn't work... I might have to add some new ones, which means building more sets, not to mention the fun of matching the lighting to existing scenes. WHEEEEE!

2011-10-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

Clay that is too sticky can become tamed by melting it down and stirring in corn starch. That's the finding I've been waiting for...Now I definitely know how to control the recipe and it's repeatable! Making the clay harder is the next goal. Trying to do it without paraffin first.

It's great fun to play with the clay formulation, but it's being done with a hand-held saucepan and a heat gun in a closed-off room so that may not be the healthiest way to go about it. At the moment, clay is being poured on plastic wrap and left to cool on the concrete floor. It's a messy, disorganized process, but I am learning a great deal. I hope to one day create my own brand of modeling clay, specially formulated with animators in mind. For now, it feels great to know what to do when clay is too soft, sticky, or crumbly.

Soft: add paraffin
Sticky: add corn starch
Crumbly: add micro wax

Softness is the result of too much mineral oil, stickiness is the result of too much micro, and crumbly is the result of too much corn starch or paraffin. It's a rhombus of ingredients, and too much or too little of any one thing will cause a predictable flaw in the clay.

Also observed: when melting clay, I can tell there's too much micro in it because it takes longer to melt (higher melting temp). I can tell there's too much corn starch in it because it's too sludgy (should be like chocolate syrup, not cake frosting when in the double boiler). I can tell there's too much mineral oil or paraffin in it when the mixture is too much like paint.

IMPORTANT!!! Never pour the clay onto the saran wrap right after removing the heat source. The clay will be too hot and it will melt through the plastic. Gotta spatula a whole batch off the floor now.

More on that:

Always start with white micro wax and then add corn starch powder. This will result in the firmest, smoothest, and most flexible clay. The powder makes the clay harder, but also more brittle, not unlike the paraffin.

When adding paraffin: never go over 1/4 the total mixture by volume. As I found with Batik wax, even as much as 50 percent will tilt the recipe towards brittleness. 1/4 should be just the right amount of wax to clay. This is only for the Ivory color clay, though. The other colors contain more powder and less micro, so less paraffin must be used. 1:8 by volume should do the trick. Generally speaking, it is easier to "fix" clay that is too sticky than clay that is brittle because pure white micro takes forever to melt. Clay that is too soft is generally the Claytoons line, so leach that. The crumbly stuff is usually the Flesh color, so melt that with white micro and mix in corn starch. It is easier to measure and mix corn starch by first mixing it with cold water and then adding it to the saucepan with the clay and wax in it.

Also, to desaturate clay, melt and stir in some Ivory colored Van Aken. This tip came from Webster Colcord via a Youtube comment he left on a Raisin video (author's note: paraffin soaks up the pigment as well, but Webster's approach leaves it smoother and more workable).

And finally, try to cut up your blocks of clay into 16 equal smaller blocks! It's much easier to tint according to the color wheel or add wax and powder by volume. A future post will involve mixing colors with Ivory clay and oil paint, but that won't be for awhile yet. For now, I'm just making special batches of harder Ivory and getting that down before adding the messy aspect of colored pigments.

Tomorrow, the leaching begins!

2011-10-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

hi,

Been thinking about how you could make overly waxy clay less sticky when making your own clay. Thoughts on that:

Mineral oil, like paraffin, is composed of short chain carbon atoms. Petroleum jelly and microcrystalline wax are composed of long chains.

We've known that for awhile now, haven't we? But the one thing I haven't tried is to mix the mineral oil and the microcrystalline together by themselves. I have a theory that if you always start with the sticky stuff first and then add the softener, the molecules will lock and you'll have less sticky clay. If it's too soft, THEN you add the paraffin.
In the meantime, I've figured out how to make your own baby wipes if you find the stuff in the store a little expensive.

What you need: P

paper towels
a bottle of Green Works all purpose cleaner

All you have to is spray the cleaner on the towels... It really attacks the clay pigment on your hands. Whatever you do, don't mix it with your clay. It's so effective that it actually dissolves the binders in it and causes it to fall apart!`

UPDATE: I was wrong, about the mineral oil. Too much will actually make the clay sticky again. I'm not sure why. See Tuesday's post for what I've learned about mixing clay.

Cooling down

2011-09-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, I have the stomach flu, but while I'm laid up I've been exploring options for making the studio cooler. A big part of clay softness and a stuffy room has always had to do with the amount of heat from the lights reaching the clay. I am now looking at cooling down the room by replacing all of the tungsten incandescent light bulbs with CFL's. I had no idea they gave off so little heat! They burn so cool that the company that makes those little light bulb-heated brownie ovens had to rethink their design because a compact fluorescent bulb won't make the oven hot enough to cook anything.

I did the math and figured that at the moment, 90% of the energy from a single incandescent tungsten light reaching the clay is pure heat. A CFL is 75% cooler than that, so the heat drops from 90% per bulb to about 23%. That will make the clay much firmer and the room 67% cooler than it is now with a single light on. I might not even have to harden the clay with wax and just start using it straight out of the package.

I'm hoping that the use of grape seed oil will take care of the other cause of softeness in the clay.

It's pretty great that these are changes I can make when I'm well enough to walk around (brainstorming has always been something I do when I'm sick)

So, how's THIS for a plasticine recipe?

1 part grape seed oil
4 parts CFL lights
1 lb firmer and less soggy clay
1 happy animator

The Last Word

2011-09-25T08:07:00.000-07:00

Hi gang, how's it going?

I've been playing around a bit with different oils and kind of discovered that grape seed oil has more nutritional value than other vegetable oils. It even has olive oil beat for health benefits, although it may not keep for as long (the clerk I spoke to estimated its shelf life to be "about a year"). It is great for your skin and the molecules are shaped like little boat anchors, which prevents them from being absorbed very quickly by whatever they're sitting on top of. I've been searching high and low for an oil that sits on the surface, to cut back on having soggy clay. It looks like this stuff will fit the bill.

Grape seed oil is a little more expensive than olive oil, but I think it may be the best oil going at the moment that you can use with Van Aken clay. My theory is that the clay won't need to be hardened if the oil being used to smooth it doesn't make it soft. GSO is a very lightweight oil, so a little bit goes a long way. Because it is thin, it doesn't have a tendency to clog your brush, either. AWESOME! Kind of makes sense, though... Imagine clay Raisins covered in grape oil :-) It just fits, doesn't it?

Pass the Malaise, Dear

2011-09-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

Fall, despite being within the colder months of the year, always puts me in a funk.

On the bright side, I've made some strides with regard to mixing clay. If you blend two blocks (1/8 bar) of white with one block (1/16 bar) of orange, you get a really cartoony "caucasian" flesh tone. I like it much more than the pre-mixed "flesh" color. The super-light orange shade just pops and doesn't look too naturalistic or green-looking. Generally speaking, I don't like making human characters because my attempts at people aren't very exciting and if I made a black guy, someone might say "that looks terrible! This guy's a racist!!". This orangey tone might not work on every character, but when it comes down to it, it's really the lighting that dictates the way a puppet looks. Well, lighting and also camera angle. For example, a warm orange gel can make a puppet's face glow as the sun fades down out of the night sky. You could already have the warm glow from just the hue of the puppet in the first place.

Remembering

2011-09-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

Today, I have no official plans other than to sit and think, and hope, and pray that we all make it through this 10th year anniversary of the worst event to ever happen in any of our lifetimes. Be well, my friends, and may whatever god you believe in bless you and keep you safe.

Attention all clay animators

2011-09-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

Figured out how to make clay harder with paraffin, by hand. What you do is scrape a block of it into a pot with a clay cleanup tool and work the shavings into the clay by hand or with a pasta maker.

Unfortunately, soft clay and paraffin are a brittle mix, so you need a third ingredient, and that is stikki wax. Stikki wax is very flexible, and counters the brittleness of paraffin.

So that's it, all there is to it. The only thing I can't figure out is how to keep metal sculpting tools from sticking to the clay. No clue about that one... But I've always wanted to be able to make harder clay without a heat gun or double boiler, and now it's possible. That makes me really happy.

So if you ever need firmer clay for a nose or eyelids, that's how to do it with no health risks from the vapors of molten wax.

Chalking it up

2011-09-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,

Over the years chalk has come up in conversation about plasticine, but I never knew where to buy it. Fast forward to today, when I found it in the hardware store where they sell stuff for making snap lines (to mark off areas before painting).

The chalk comes in a white powder and if you dust your hands with it before touching your plasticine, it won't feel as oily. You can also mix it into the plasticine in a double boiler, but be careful not to use too much it as falls apart because the chalk binds to the oil. Chalk is especially useful if you have plasticine that has gotten too oily, which was the main issue I had in the past.

So, there you go- hope that helps in some way.

I leave you now with one of my very first clay animations. This is from 1994 and I was very happy to find it on an old tape.

Seattle Trip

2011-08-30T18:56:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I had a huge post planned, but in less than five minutes of stepping off the train, I must have set my camera down to eat and it vanished, along with the 4gig card that was in it.

I had taken over 100 great pictures of the World Sand Sculpting Championships in Federal Way, Washington but they weren't backed up... and that's how it goes. Maybe I can get my mom to send me the pictures she took. I also had shots of the police sheriffs who were at the scene when a woman threw herself under the train I was on outside of Tacoma (the worst of it was under the car I was riding in...It's sad that someone would become so despondent in life that they would want to die like that. I feel for her family.)

The good news, however, is that I found a video tape at my parents' house last night that contains one of the first animations I ever did on it! 1994 is important because it's the year I was the most heavily into clay. I believe this tape was recorded in either 1994 or 1995. Every year I've visited the folks, I've gone in the basement and searched for anything on video from that time, always coming up empty, It took 10 hours of watching two boxes of tapes in fast forward yesterday before I found that footage- and it was on the second-to-last tape I looked at. So, the search paid off!!. I'll be cuing it up and digitizing it shortly, if I can get it to play again (had trouble getting the VCR to recognize the tape speed the first time I recorded it off the TV). I'm going to really miss that camera, but its battery case never stayed closed and the screen was all scratched up, and it had a shutter problem in low light which caused the frame rate to be cut in half, so maybe it's just as well...

Luckily, the batteries were dead when the camera disappeared, so anyone who took it would have had to replace them before they could even use the camera. I can dream up all sorts of scenarios of what happened next... Maybe they shoplifted some batteries and were arrested. Maybe they tried to pawn it...Maybe they gave it to their kid and seeing the videos inspired them so much that they decided to start animating... I like that last idea, but it's out of my hands now. I'm just going to try to make the best of it and take what I can from this lesson.

RIP, little Kodak Zi6. You've been good to me.

If the camera is found or I'm able to recover what was on it from other sources, I will put up the details in a future post. One of the highlights of the visit to Seattle was checking out my friend Chris Rodgers' studio. He is doing some amazing things in silicone and showed me how to make a mold and cast things in resin. More on that later.

2011-08-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

I've been practicing sculpting every day and improving the techniques.The next (new) film you see from me will be Storytime With Pram II and it should be done by Halloween. It's about a racist jerk (among other things) and is another simple story under a minute long with a moral lesson and twisted humor. The design is brightly colored and soft-looking, but very dark in subject matter. The storyline is similar to Blue Alien Summer, but alludes to Storytime With Pram 1. I'm spending the next couple of weeks making the puppets and set(s) and hope to start animating in September. I'm going for shock value this time around and a more refined look (no donut mouths!). As always, the subject matter will be deeply disturbing and funny as hell. In other words, it will be what you've always come to expect in a Pram Maven Film.

In other news, there's a job interview later this week, and facility tour- something in health care. I was first approached about this position two years ago. I didn't follow up on it at the time because I thought it was a bluff. Over the years I've had a lot of people tell me all kinds of stuff at work and none of them were serious. Well, this one was, and she has been trying forever to get me out of retail and into something more fulfilling. I think I would get a lot out of this job...I didn't mind retail, but I really like the idea of helping people get better.

The cool thing is that it is not super far away, and I'd be working just as much as I am now- only the schedule would be flip-flopped. AWESOME! I'm looking forward to this new adventure.

Clay study

2011-08-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

I made this for a friend who lost her Raisin toy during a move.

Also, here's the only pic from the film I'm not sure I'm going to make. It has a much more graphic look to it than previous work, I was thinking of abstract art in terms of color and texture.

Not sure where I'm going with it, but it would be interesting to explore.

Mexican actress-songwriter to make a splash in the U.S.

2011-08-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

I don't usually cover music on my blog, but as someone who loves earnest pop artists, I just had to share this with you (And it has PUPPETS!)

Her name is Ximena Sariñana, and...WOW! Sings, plays keyboards, has a Jazz background...and when she's not doing that, she ACTS! Her native language isn't even English, and her first album is being offered in it before its release date in Mexico. I am heartened by that, because the only thing I don't like about Mexican culture is that I can't understand Spanish. If I could just get past that language barrier and learn it, I'd see everything I'm missing out on, especially since the people who have been the most kind to me were from Mexico. My favorite animators are Mexican. I think, if this woman had been born in the United States, she would be some mindless pop star. THANK YOU, Mexico, for the gift of her talents! I dig her quirkiness and originality too- especially the bridge in the song. It sounds as consoling and apologetic as the lyrics. Her voice reminds me of Fiona Apple, but she has her own style, definitely. It sounds like she's even using a drum machine on the record, and she plays a Casio keyboard live. The most refreshing of all, is that she doesn't use Autotone. FINALLY, we get a pop starlet who doesn't sound like a pitch-perfect robot.

Here is a live video, from Leno.

"Sariñana springs from these tracks a fully formed character: playful, giddy, occasionally difficult, worried that she can’t keep up with the angels but determined to stay sweet even in the face of disappointment."

That says it all. I am excited for this girl. I hope The United States will set aside its petty (although, thankfully diminishing) racial differences and embrace her with open arms.

Post dos

2011-08-14T16:57:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, turns out, "Elephant" was taken. Ah well... Looks like I've come full circle with the naming convention, and I've stopped caring what people think of what it means (Parameter Random Access Memory).

Alright. So I will admit, I've been cheating on my animation and going out with music lately. Those are my two biggest passions, always competing for time. No biggie, I'll just make room for both of them.

NOW, THEN!

I have written a script for Storytime With Pram II. As much as I dislike sequels, this one will be funny, mildly shocking, and entertaining- all of which have always been associated with this brand. It will also be an attempt to flesh out Blue Alien Summer's story more, but in a simpler way (although in this version there will be little or no dialog, and no weird asmospheric lighting). As far as the animation method, harkening back to what I was doing in the 90's and the tendency for clay to be soft I'd like to do this one on glass. The main issue with that is lighting it so there are no reflections. The look I'm going for this time out is brightly colored and cartoony. Reflecting that, the look of the characters will probably be a little different. As far as I'm concerned, BAS was never finished and I'm still kind of bummed that its story isn't clear. I'm not exactly a master storyteller, so I'm just going to go for wacky this time around. Telling great stories never interested me anyway... I just wanted to animate on cool stuff.

I'll still make horror music, but I'm looking at a name change for that. I'll keep you posted. For too long, Pram Maven has been associated with negativity (given the style of music it is). I want it to represent something positive. There's a lot of nostalgia in Pram Maven Films, and my mindset is to preserve that and continue building on it. The music can (and should) be its own thing. It was a mistake to bring those two together. The bigger mistake, though, was to run from what I'd created. Risquee or not, Pram Maven is a magnification of who I am, and probably always will be. Just like Marilyn Manson is Brian Warner's alter ego, and Tony Clifton was Andy Kaufman on his off-days.

I'm not ashamed of being more than one-dimensional. We all have a dark side... Mine writes jokes and makes industrial music. It is what it is.

2011-08-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,

The blog's been moved back to donmation.blogspot.com.

I'm not sure how to transport followers of this blog over there, so I'll just leave this blog up.

See you there,

-Don

How to remove fingerprints from clay animation

2011-07-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

I found a couple of discoveries, both of which are more effective than other efforts to combat the problem of....fingerprints.

As you know, when you sculpt, you're bound to leave some. Trying to smooth them out of the clay with a brush and some olive oil makes the clay soft after doing this for several frames.

If all you need to do is get rid of those pesky prints, here are three easier ways to do it:

1. Wipe them out with software. Virtualdub has a filter called "Smoother" built into it. Load it and drag the slider until the fingerprints disappear. This will make the image blur slightly, so you'll need to add post edge sharpening. I like Msharpen for this purpose, but you can get away with just using Sharpen, which also comes pre-installed as a filter.

2. If you'd rather not have fingerprints to BEGIN with, which is probably optimal, you can get these things called "finger cots". No comment on what they're for... Basically, it's like a one-finger glove. Just roll one onto the finger you like to smooth your clay figures with, and you won't have the loss of tactility that wearing gloves would cause. Also, since the finger cots are designed to be a tighter fit than each finger of a full glove (unless you bought gloves that are smaller than your hands), and they come in different sizes, it will be like one of your fingers is a smoothing tool while the rest are free to sculpt as usual. So, that's one idea.

3. Increase your scale. This isn't even an option for me, given the cramped set space I have to work with- but if you can get away with it, make your puppets bigger. This will make your fingerprints appear smaller in close-ups.

I've already tried the software solution and it works very well. It's like there were never any fingerprints there, even in high-contrast photography. I'll probably go with a mix of options 1 and 2 for maximum efficiency.

Here are some test images, using a close-up of an image that was graciously given to me by the Oregon Historical Society. Because the images started as JPEG's, I did not sharpen them as much as I would with higher quality source material and these appear slightly soft in the "after" pictures. As these are extreme close-ups anyway, the softness wouldn't show in a full shot, so it's a non-issue. The idea was just to show how much you can clean up an image.

(click to enlarge)

What does this mean for clay animation? Well, it suggests that you can make the clay look like it was untouched by human hands if you want to. Pretty cool, I think. Especially when you're trying for a commercial cleanness or you're working with tiny puppets which would get marred by a single fingerprint if one appeared anywhere on its face or body.

2011-07-14T11:12:00.000-07:00

Any time someone tries to do something and becomes fairly known, they will get a fair amount of flack at some point. I've been Google-bombed, which is the main reason I've been away. At first it bugged me, but the fake articles are so ridiculous, no one would ever take them seriously. I'm not sure who is impersonating me in them, but they really studied the way I write.

On a serious note, I've cleaned out the studio and tossed a good third of what was in it, along with my hair. Most of it was stuff like a computer monitor that was too dim to see anything on it, giant plastic bins that I thought would help keep things organized but instead made the space feel cramped, skin lotions and oils I had bought while looking for the perfect solution to smooth clay, cardboard, and paper. All that went to the dump, and I'm relieved to be rid of it. That was an early Birthday present from an old friend.

At the moment, I'm enjoying a cooler studio and continuing to organize it into a useful animation and music space. One idea is to use the high stage for dimensional sets and keep the lower one set up for clay on glass...Or maybe keep it folded up when it's not in use. Still more clutter than I like, but I've got a good start on it.

Got it down.

2011-07-08T07:41:00.001-07:00

Hi folks,

Well, there is good reason for using the paper towel method with oil. You will NEVER have too much on your brush. There is just no other way to carefully smooth clay. I'm throwing out all other possibilities, including Everclear, which I just tried to no avail.

The idea about needing to have the clay be cold... I didn't realize how good I had it back in the early 90's. My bedroom was not connected to the furnace as well as the other rooms so It was always the coldest room in the house. During summer, I had both windows open. I really miss that, because the clay was never too soft and I had no experience with the room ever being too hot. It was the perfect conditions for clay animation. This was also in 1994, back when Summers weren't hitting the record temperatures they're hitting now. There were shades that could be pulled down over the windows, so I didn't get interference from the sun. That, is really ideal.

So, short of moving to a new place, I need to make some adjustments. There is an air conditioner in the next room over, so that may be all it takes to get it cold enough in here. At the moment, the other room is 70 degrees, so that's... 28.6 degrees colder than I am. On a lark, I put a fan by the door and hung a black sheet.

2011-07-07T06:09:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone,

I got some Fimo Soft and am very impressed with it. It was quickly able to be conditioned, and after a few rolls and pats, the stuff just hung over my finger. Between Sculpey III and Fimo Soft, I would say that Fimo Soft gets my vote for animation. Fimo was recommended by the great Norwegian animator, Pjotr Sapegin who has animated both plasticine and Fimo and preferred the Fimo.

Also finally found and bought some 70% rubbing alcohol (with denatured Ethyl instead of Isopropyl) and soaked a ball of clay in it. The clay did not liquefy, which is a good sign. I really want to try some Everclear or denatured alcohol on it because those are the highest purity of Ethyl alcohol I know of and they don't produce the kind of toxic fumes you get with mineral spirits. At least, I don't think so, anyway, after spending a lot of time researching both.

Well, that's all for now...The reason I haven't done any animation lately is because it is extremely hot here in the Summer and the oil I use to smooth clay with on top of the intense heat in a workshop with no ventilation and the hot lights used to illuminate the sets and characters... That adds up to mushy puppets and dehydration for me. I'm trying to work something out, and since the cats live outside now, it will be easier- just leave this room open to the hallway and let air cycle through from the air conditioner in the next room over.

Another thing that will help is to get a portable cooler and store the puppets in there until they're needed. Even a beer cooler would work... Anything to get those clay things down to the temperature where they can be moved and re-sculpted without becoming a puddle.

An interesting side note; some of the best clay animation to come out of Portland was animated in a warehouse that was 100 degrees. Clay melts at 150, so it could still be animated. I imagine a freezer was kept on hand somewhere nearby to cool the puppets between shots. I did hear that they froze the molds to quickly cool the clay inside after double-boiling it to pour it into them.

So, the idea to use alcohol spirits to smooth instead of oil is part of the attempt to lessen the softness of the clay puppets and give me some peace of mind while animating them.

Another thing I want to figure out is how to smooth with oil while retaining a matte surface on the clay. It would be easy to just say, "well, clay isn't working out... I'll try something else". I'm too stubborn for that and have never backed away from a goal once I put my mind to it. At this point, I really want to have mastered clay animation before moving on to the next medium. What's driving me is seeing the specials from 20 years ago. The way they move... And the expressions and humor of the characters invoke a certain childlike fascination with the clay aesthetic. It's like drinking your favorite brand of alcohol...intoxicating!

2011-07-01T11:00:00.001-07:00

Once again, I've been corrected. PAX paint is best with Pro-Aide. The glue I was using is more plastic than rubber. I feel silly. This is why I stuck with clay for so long. I just know more about it than other materials. The next project... *sigh*... and despite my love-hate relationship with it...will be clay.

I have no idea when I'll start it. I'm going to have a drink first.

2011-06-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

Been doing a bunch of art-related stuff, and having fun. It's hot in the studio, but I'm making the most of it.

One simple trick I learned was that if you take a sewing needle and dip it in acrylic paint, you can stick it in the puppet's eye bead holes and get a nice iris that way.
Had I thought of it two years ago, all of the puppets on Blue Alien Summer would have had nicer eyes. Not perfect ones, but keeping to the slightly sloppy style I love. Ah, well.

Another trick I'm playing with- you squeeze out a tiny drop of blue acrylic paint onto wax paper, wait for it to dry, then a black drop in the center. Then, get a razor blade and scrape the whole thing off. You will now have something you can slide around on a glass bead with vaseline to make it stick. That's another thing I've wanted but never had- hard eye pieces that don't distort when you touch them. Black Friendly Plastic would do the same thing and would probably be more durable. Baked Sculpey would also work...I just like to keep it simple, and cured acrylic paint is as simple as it gets.

The white paint took about five coats of acrylic paint over baked Super Sculpey. For some reason, that stuff is hard to paint. Maybe it has to be sanded first.

One more thing I want to do is get my hands on some denatured alcohol (Ethyl). That stuff evaporates fast and might be good for smoothing clay. As of this moment, I have no idea what the next project will be. I'm mostly just honing techniques to be better prepared later. The very hot studio is presenting some problems with animating clay, so I really want to get that issue licked any way I can (add paraffin chip in a double boiler, leach out the excess oil with paper on either side of a slab of clay...Whatever it takes) This softness problem during animation has gone on too long and it's interfering with the quality I know is possible.

PAX painted!

2011-06-29T21:02:00.001-07:00

Hi guys,

I've been holed up in the studio the past few days experimenting with build-up techniques.

By far, the greatest discovery was that tacky glue makes acrylic paint flexible. In addition to that, Model Magic is wonderful stuff to make virtually any shape (with a bit of patience).

I made a hand out of it and then dipped it in liquid latex and surprisingly it held up. The latex is sealing out air, so the Model Magic inside stays squishy. I tried with an armature, but it's not really strong enough...Maybe many, many layers of liquid latex would help that... I'm not sure. Model Magic is really nice for smoothing out a rough body though, or adding a big stomach on a heavy set character.

2011-06-23T11:04:00.001-07:00

Still trying to figure out how to smooth away fingerprints on a clay puppet without making the surface mushy and weird.

One possibility is to double-boil it with paraffin. This not only firms it up, but draws all the ingredients together and cuts down on the stickiness, which creates drag when you try to use a tool to smooth it. It can be softened with a hair dryer moved quickly over the surface, which is a much better choice than a heat gun, which will just make the clay melt... Doing this on set, of course, wouldn't be recommended. I think your puppets would think it was a hurricane.

Also looking at adding a filter to the camera lens so the prints don't show up in the first place. That is very much worth looking into and isn't too expensive. These filters are sold in camera stores everywhere.

As much as I love sculpting with clay, the ever-changing ingredients in it is making it harder to work with. I tried liquid latex, but it just doesn't intrigue me in the same way clay does. I like having the level of control over the quality of the image, as well as the texture you can quickly do in clay that you can't do in other mediums as fast (and even if you could, it can only be animated with replacements). Granted, the animation process takes longer, but it's so rewarding... My attempts at liquid latex puppets just aren't coming out as well as they would in clay. However, the techniques I'm using to build the armatures are the same in both. One improvement was using Friendly Plastic over aluminum foil to create a hard skull. Super Sculpey or Magic Sculp can also be used; they have the same effect of giving you hard support for your puppet's face to be sculpted onto. No more crunchy foam in my clay puppets. That made animating them a nightmare on Blue Alien Summer.

Meanwhile, Sculpey III is looking promising again because you can keep it soft with oil or mix it with a new type the company makes called "Bake Shop". This is very soft clay and can be worked into their other lines to make it more pliable. The only drawback is that you need to know your color wheel. That's not a bad tradeoff, I don't think. Granted, you need to take greater care when animating with sculpey, but the results are generally cleaner looking.

2011-06-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had an interview on the Animateclay! Live Chat Show.

You can watch here.

It was fun. We had a couple of technical difficulties (internet connection glitched) but for the most part it went smoothly.

2011-06-15T21:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, got this figured out. Heads: baked Super Sculpey or Sculpey Firm over aluminum foil armature and painted. Hair: Same, or Model Magic. Body: liquid latex over medical bandages (dipped latex). Advantages: head is smooth looking, body can be rough, arms and legs are smooth. Face details will stick to head (Sculpey III). Clay-like look, no resculpting.

If I ever go back to clay, the heads will still be Friendly Plastic or Magic Sculp over aluminum foil with plasticine on top. That will ensure strength and support under the clay.

Clear latex is on the way, so also going to try embedding acrylic paint under it so brushes can be used to paint the puppet. Clear latex on top to seal it. Hoping and praying that will work. Never seen it done before, except with dipped silicone with tints embedded. I've been advised that this could cause micro-cracks on the puppet. Worth trying... I'm mostly concerned with getting the head to look right. The body can be kind of messed up, as long as the head is smooth. That, to me, is the most important part of the character and what people spend the most time looking at.

As for the sets... Those will be rubber regardless of whether or not the puppets are clay. Sponged-on rubber.

2011-06-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

I am posting in praise of Model Magic.

The stuff is amazing for roughing out build-up puppet faces. I imagine you could even press some onto an aluminum foil head armature and then dip it in latex to get a really smooth surface. So far, I have successfully attempted a nose that looks like clay.

The more I work with balloon rubber, the more I like it. I'm trying to get the quality up to the point that I can proceed without clay. Van Aken has served me well, but there's so much more you can do with non-clay puppets. You don't have that weight factor to fight against. Any position you can bend wire into, you can do with this type of puppet. Even the sets can be painted with tinted latex to worldize the rubber look.

2011-06-07T16:53:00.000-07:00

The latex came today, it's white and pretty much like all the other latex I've had. Very thin, though. I'm mostly curious about how to paint a latex puppet smoothly. It seriously gums up the paint brush, so it's not effective for getting latex on the puppet. Dabbing it on makes it lumpy. I'm a little frustrated, but I'll figure something out. Maybe I'm not as done with clay as I had hoped. That new clay I bought is pretty awful, though. It's too soft to do anything with. Don't buy off-brand clay, folks. Van Aken is really the best you can get for animation. Supposedly, Fimo Soft is supposed to be really good too. I'm curious about it enough to give it a go...

The View From Behind A Melting Mask

2011-06-02T04:37:00.001-07:00

I'd give up any fame and success for the headline of my obituary to read, "Don Carlson (Pram Maven)...was kind."

2011-05-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

Want to try editing Blue Alien Summer so it works... Not sure it's possible, but it would be worth a try. Since most of the story problems are in the dialog, that could be trimmed back a bit. A couple of visuals were also confusing...Cutting them might not affect the timing too much. Definitely trying.

2011-05-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

Wrote a script for the next project, I think it works. It's clear and simple, and all that. Even so, it's not something that will be quick. I have not gotten good at storytelling with a single character and a plain background. I'd probably get bored with the lack of scenery because lighting it is a big part of my enjoyment for animation. I have nothing but respect for the animators who can pull that off. Some great stuff out there. Looking at materials now. Liquid latex looks like a good option...The fact that you can just get some rubber and mix it with acrylic paints intrigues me. I used to hate painting, but oil-based clay has a staining pigment in it. What is really the difference, between melted clay and uncured paint? One is meant to dry and last, and the other isn't.

So, I'm off to that rubber site...

2011-05-18T13:31:00.001-07:00

Higher quality version of BAS, with better sound:

BAS 1080p from DC on Vimeo.

As you can see, the gamma bug was finally fixed in Quicktime! WOOHOO!!

BAS is up

2011-05-09T02:31:00.000-07:00

Because of story problems, I've decided to just put BAS out there any way I can. It's not going the festival circuit. The one festival I submitted it to rejected it, which is perfectly understandable. It was my first longer film, and those are never perfect.

But, I learned a TON making it. More complex lip sync, lighter weight armatures, replaceable heads, more refined lighting, and everything else you can think of that you would see in a short.

Anyway, here's the film, for anyone who didn't see it. Hope you like it! :)