Rose Overload

One of the things I've been wanting to use this blog for is to share some videos that aren't necessarily my finest work. Some might be home movies (like the recent kite and skiing videos); some might be clips from short films I made years ago; and some might be new, experimental pieces that are stepping stones between more major projects (see the example below). I don't want to post all of these "B movies" on Vimeo or YouTube because if somebody Googles me, I'd prefer they come across the pieces that I am most proud of rather than these lesser works. By posting them on my blog instead, along with a brief explanation, I feel like I can retain more control of my image and keep my better output from becoming diluted. Yeah, I'm narcissistic like that.

The clip below is my first experiment with some free animation software called Monkey Jam. It's an easy-to-use program that basically takes whatever images you give it and plays them one after another, allowing you to put together some simple stop-motion.

For this one, I imported 200 photos of flowers snapped in our condo's rose garden, added a few titles, picked out a Depeche Mode song, and voila...


Fun stuff. I already have a second animation test in the planning phase. The new one will be more true to the concept of stop motion and, if all goes according to plan, will feature our good friend R. I'm excited!