hello everyone,
i'm working on an art project during the month of december, as the artist in residence at 309 punk project in pensacola, florida.
this website is a log of what i'm up to in the art studio & around town. thanks for visiting :)
today i moved into the studio space at 309. the benefactors turned on a space heater in my room which caused the breaker to trip, so i had to turn it off. it's a little chilly and i'm bundled up.
i went out to get supplies after i moved in. i picked up some paints & paper & air-dry clay. the clay is not good-- it melts into flat blobs before it has a chance to dry. oops ! i'll get some sculpey instead.
i started on some of the matte paintings for the intro of the short. starry sky paintings. while painting, i listened to: 1. taeko ohnuki - romantique 2. swans - great annihilator 3. bongwater - too much sleep
here are some pictures from the studio tonight :
in the morning i walked to end of the line cafe, where i got a latte and read some pages of shadow ticket by thomas pynchon. i continued painting backgrounds for the project. since my matte paintings from
yesterday had dried, i scanned them into my computer. two layers of painted outer space color, and a field of stars, each individually painted. i color corrected them in photoshop, then bounced them over to
macromedia flash to layer & animate them. they look great, i'm really happy with it :)
for lunch, valerie brought me some spicy potato tacos from taco bell. thanks val
ian confirmed plans to fit him for accessories tonight. major elements of his costume are a helmet & a mask. i'm making the mask out of plaster gauze, so it'll fit well on his face.
but i forgot the vaseline ! so after finishing more background art work, i put on my jacket and decided to walk to walgreens 11 minutes away, to buy some vaseline. on the way there some guy touched my left foot
while i waited to cross the street. in walgreens, i had trouble finding the vaseline but an employee helped me. with this, the plaster won't stick to ian's face. i got back to the studio & cut the plaster gauze
into strips with scissors, while listening to a 1980's mixtape i got from a record store, with a jcard labeled "mix blues." the tape itself is labeled "alice." it's good, lots of things i haven't heard before.
but also common things like "the thrill is gone.
ian came over around 7 and applied vaseline to his face. he didn't shave like i asked but it ended up being okay. after 10 minutes or so of moist plaster gauze
application, i got a good mask made from ian's face. ian asked if we could watch twin peaks, but i've seen that a lot & needed something new, so we decided to watch mechanical violator hakaider, a japanese
robot action film. we set up the projector in the living room to watch it. the plot was hard to follow. it had something to do with a cyborg seeking revenge on a mad scientist who dresses like a feminine angel
man & rules over a city of cyborg servants called jesus town. it's a good japanese robot movie. after ian left i did more work on rendering the introduction.
some pictures from today:
today i woke up in time to chat with a medical professional friend via phone about some plot details. we talked for about an hour. afterwards i went to meet ian for lunch at a burrito place.
it's a chain restaurant, but they decorate with art from locals. like dave's hot chicken and many others, i'm sure. after eating lunch, i went out shopping for a long while. i still
have a lot of stuff to buy for costumes, art, etc. thanks to friend m organ i got the motivation to create a discord server just for myself, where i'll type all my ideas into organized
channels and categories. one of these is a shopping list, which i used in walmart. when i got to wal mart i went to the bathroom. i waited for a stall. the person in there was standing up
and taking a very long time, not going to the bathroom. when they left it smelled like ash and pipe gunk immolated. not like weed, so maybe crack ?
i picked up some proper sculpey clay, a bra for the mermaid outfit, some moisturiser, cheap makeup, and makeup remover. i forgot to pick up flour, which i use for paper mache. next i went
to a couple different thrift stores. i got some vhs tapes & a large piece of fabric (bedsheet) from the first, and a DVD player and more fabric from the second. next i stopped at dollar
general and purchased some sewing accessories + a disgusting canned oreo iced coffee.
arriving back at 309, i got back to work on crafting the physical elements for the project. i painted some backdrops, digitised dry paintings from yesterday, drew a new bit of flier/promo
art, sculpted some models out of foil and clay, and organized a lot of my scattered notes into the discord server. at some point val and the 309 board started setting up for a meeting in
the living room. i went out and said hello for a bit but soon returned to continue working. i took a break and played mortal kombat 2 on the pc. i listened to ingeborg bachmann poems & jpop
mostly today. at night i've been going to sleep to alice coltrane.
things are coming together. i hope i'm not spending too much time on little details. maybe i won't be able to keep up the same level of detail throughout the whole project. that's okay.
it feels good to have all my ideas and information centralized in the discord server. i was feeling really wobbly and uncertain about my organisation but everything is pretty cohesive now.
it's about 10:21 as i write this, and i'm thinking of going somewhere to organise my notes a bit more. maybe betty's ? anyway i'm going to freshen up a bit then drive over there.
pictures:
today was a really good day! but a bit tiring. for the past couple of days i've had to drive around town in the morning & i'd really prefer to just wake up in the studio and start working.
it certainly drains my battery a bit, to be out in the world shopping & running errands. but on to the good stuff ! today's the day i got to fit sable for her mermaid costume.
i woke up pretty early because my stomach was aching, around 8. i worked a bit on my notes, then packed up the necessary mermaid accessories and went to sable & beth's house. today was rainy and very cold,
not pleasant to drive in, especially not knowing the roads well.
at sable's house i chatted with her & her family for a bit, then we went into sable's clubhouse and got her into her prototype mermaid costume. everything fit well ! next step is to customize it.
we had a good time taking care of business, i think i get along with sable and beth very well. after the fitting i picked up some flour for paper mache & free cardboard.
went back to 309 & sable + beth met me there. they dj'd songs on the speaker and kept me company while i painted. sable and i showed each other old computer games we'd made.
i also baked the clay miniatures & did a coat of paint on them.
after they left 309 i went to work scanning in more art & importing it into flash. i got a basic interior scene up and running. it would help if i had access to a media player w/ rca out, so i could
record my test footage to vhs and see how it looks. i'm a bit worried about cropping, color, sharpening, resolution, flicker, & artifacts when i bounce the video to vhs and back. i'll
text 309 tomorrow about getting access to a media player.
didn't take as many pictures today, here's a few:
today i woke up around one pm, didnt open my eyes and get out of bed until around 2. i spent most of the afternoon and evening maintaining hygiene & physical health i'd been neglecting the past few days. i took a bath and a shower because i didnt want to wash my hair in the bath. i was in the bathroom for almost four hours. i listened to taeko ohnuki - sunshower, singles by Valérie Čižmárová, viewfinder by wendy eisenberg, and more while i was in there. i was right about being a bit drained, i couldnt do much today. i coordinated with val about getting a media player at 309 to dub digital video to vhs, and got another wig for a costume. otherwise just selfcare and eating, listening to music.
around 9 i went to bettys for a dance party. i went really hard in the beginning, there werent many people on the dance floor so i was zooming and spinning around the empty space. really good time. the place eventually filled out more an hour later but i was tired by then from the zooming and spinning. plus there wasnt much standing room, and im big & take up a lot of space, so i didnt know where to put my body when not dancing. i talked to ryan and she said she'd be interested in playing a part in the project. yay :)
i went back to 309 a little before midnight. i hope ive got more energy and drive tomorrow. i know i need to rest and take care of myself but im worried i could slip into a task averse state for days. i've spent too much of my life like that, sort of frozen or avoidant in the midst of projects i decided to take on. oh well, i always end up making things happen in the end.
me and ryan from bettys:
hey, things went well today. i woke up late again but still managed to get a lot done. i got out of bed around 3 & went to walgreens to get razors & shaving cream. ate breakfast/lunch at 309 and watched an episode
of house md. i started watching this series to get ideas about how to structure disease mystery stories. it looks like there are also some similarities in season one, to a plot point that comes up in my story,
which i love. cryptomnesia maybe ? i did watch this show as a kid when it started airing.
i got a lot more dialog & story points done, getting closer to a fleshed out script. i also lined up the rest of my actors for motion capture dates this week. i've got owen and ryan on monday, ian on tuesday,
sable and beth on wednesday, and emma on thursday. i consulted with emma a bit over discord about ideas related to her character. she's a big fan of a certain motion picture franchise that has some superficial
plot similarities to what her character does, so we bounced ideas off each other for a bit. "creative consultant" ! :)
this evening i painted clay miniatures some more. some of them have to be green in the finished product, but since i'm using a green screen, i've got to paint them alternate colors & hue-shift them in post.
next, using ian's plaster face cast as a base, i applied painters' tape and cardstock to his mask to create something like the ninjas' masks in ultimate mortal kombat 3. i then ripped up pages from a cheap coloring book
into strips, mixed up some flour and water, and applied the floury paper strips to the mask. it turned out really well ! i think it'll look great painted.
finally i did a similar process to a cheap cat-eat headband i got from a dollar store. i used painters' tape and cardstock to build the armature of some horns for ian's head, then applied flour-dipped coloring book
page strips to it. the horns are a bit uneven but i don't think it'll show too much after being digitized. excited to paint these horns too.
this evening i got the digital scans of some disposable camera photos i took from october to december. lots of good ones in there from our trip to AGACII in rochester, ny and our trip to noise feast in tallahassee.
here's a few pictures of prop/costume progress from today, and the last picture is one ian or owen took of me backstage at AGAC II in rochester, making the candystripe barbershop pole for baby gerald's cosmetology school:
another good day! i woke up pretty early considering my recent schedule, about eleven or so, and took another bath. i'm still not used to baths, i don't know what to do in them besides shave. the tub here is far too small for me,
and my large body displaces so much of the water that i can't have much in there. this has been good bath practice. val ordered a media player with rca-out a few days ago. it came in today, along with my capture card dongle. i still need to get some triple a batteries and a flash drive to make it work. i also need a working vcr so i can dub the edited mermaid surgeon vhs back to a digital file, once the movie is done.
today i went to see the art show that my friend coco curates in mobile, neu dawn, left here around 3. it was enjoyable & i got to see a few friends while i was there. lots of art, models in costumes, and a playlist of music. cool time :)
after the art show i went back to my room in mobile to gather a few things. pete and laurie were there watching star trek enterprise. they made french fries for all of us and i hung out for a while. we talked about penis bones in mammals, a documentary they'd been watching about a corrupt & abusive hiphop artist, and we watched a custom karaoke video a friend of pete made, for an original song by one of their old coworkers. it was nice getting to see them & jetty the dog. while i was there i picked up my pinback button maker, various costume tops and hats, another wig, some shirts to possibly paint to sell, and some chocolate. with that i drove back to pensacola.
back at 309 the folkpunk house show was almost over, just one act remained. i waded through the crowd wearing one of the costume hats i brought & holding an aldi bag full of the rest. one of the people from pigeon pit complemented the hat, said it was "the coolest hat in the world." i think i agree with that. it's a black felt cowboy hat with a little brown ornamental band. i had the hat guy at cavenders flatten it out so it's not all bendy. the hat guy called it "the wyatt earp." i like it but don't wear it at all anymore. maybe somebody will wear it for a part in the short film. anyway, i put my stuff up then made my way through the crowd toward the kitchen where i cooked a cup o noodles with the electric kettle. i had to part the crowd again to get back to my room and eat, this time holding a hot cup o noodles. i felt comical and a little important, like an organelle providing essential nutrients to some other part of a cell. "i'm sorry, cup o noodles coming through. sorry. sorry." in my room i did my shot and ate my noodles while pigeon pit played.
when pigeon pit was done, owen, ryan, and charlie came into my room. charlie got her banjo signed by one of the pigeon pit people. she took it out to show us. some guy came into the room and i asked, "who are you." i maybe should have told him i was the artist in residence, i don't know. i don't think anyone who saw the open door tonight knew what i was doing here. anyway the guy's name was dave i think, and he brought a guitar in and me, him, and charlie played 'gentle on my mind' by glen campbell. i played keyboard and charlie played her banjo. after that it got a little hectic, people kept peeking in. i should've closed the door but i was kinda frozen from all the bustle. anyway, it was a good time. i need to let the culture leak into my life a bit while i'm here even if it's a little uncomfortable. also someone came in holding a pigeon pit shirt, saying the band was trying to deliver it to a tall person with curly brown hair. i was pretty sure they meant me because no one else fit the description. but i didn't pay for a shirt so i said i had been misidentified. maybe pigeon pit was trying to give me a free shirt because they liked my hat.
i had started painting ian's mask and horns during pigeon pit's set, and continued after my friends left. they're looking good. i'm going for a fireblu look, like the doom texture. ian the fireblu umk3 ninja. i also painted some more xzverry poulaki material. at some point i went out and asked scott & lauren with 309 if they needed any help packing up, and they had me lift a table while they put a carpet under it. when i got back to my room i messed around with the media player and tv/vcr combo. i also painted a really nice little computer scene for althea's office. i need to complete a lot more paintings before the week is up.
tomorrow owen and ryan are coming over. i've gotta get up early and set up the green screen, lights, and camera. i got some pictures today of these various things. here they are:
got a lot done today. the show organizers last night turned off the heat after leaving (as they're supposed to), probably not realizing i don't have a space heater in here. so i woke up pretty cold & not wanting to get out of bed. i used a pot to cook some ichiban noodles instead of eating the cup o noodles. it was okay. not as good as the cup. i took a while setting up the greenscreen & lights, and doing some test composite shots to make sure the lighting would work with my chroma key method. everything is looking good.
ryan and owen got here around the same time to film their parts. ryan got her friend adrien to do some makeup on her & it looks great. first owen dj'd some music while ryan and i got her shots done. good dramatic poses that'll do well when composited. next i filmed owen in both outfits. i kept the shoot pretty minimal as their characters don't have a ton of screentime, but i still made sure to do a few shots where they got to goof off and smile. it was fun !
after they left, i went to walgreens to get AAA batteries and some shoelaces to hold ian's mask on tomorrow. i came back to 309 and threw together some composite test shots on my computer using the footage from today. i thought i could use either my camera's memory card or my phone as storage for this rca-out media player, but neither worked. so i didn't get a chance to dub the test shots to VHS yet. that'll be for tomorrow if i can get a proper flash drive.
finally i finished up the paints on ian's fireblu ninja mask & horns. i'm pleased with how they turned out. ian's supposed to come over during his lunch break tomorrow. he said he'll order us some food then we can eat and get to business. at night time jackie said she'll come over and play another patient.
some photos from the green screen session with owen and ryan:
had a good day today, though i lost some energy in the second half and stayed up entirely too late. I woke up way after i set my alarm for. only got up about 30 minutes before ian got here for the motion capture session. he got an extra hour off work at lunch so we could film him in front of the green screen. the shoot went well, we used all two hours and got some good, comprehensive footage.
after ian left i ate lunch, then went to buy a flash drive. now i'm finally able to record my digital video to vhs. i spent a while troubleshooting the media player. i fixed the frame bleeding into overscan but it's still a little off center. unfortunately the media player doesnt have a pan function, so its stuck there until post. it's very exciting seeing my footage on vhs.
i sat around for about an hour then ryan came over to grab the charger she forgot here yesterday. i intended to get right to art next, but ended up doing some reading about an artist that i enjoy for a few hours.
after reading, i put some finishing touches on sable's costume. while i worked, i watched serial experiments lain on the crt val let me borrow, because thats the only 4:3 series i have digital files for on my computer. i fucked around a lot and stayed up way too late. hopefully sable and beth will be fine getting a later start today so i can get some sleep. i still need to pick up some plastic wrap, safety pins, and 1-or-2 other things i'm forgetting, before they arrive. anyway, it's morning. i hear the birds.
i've got to get my sleep schedule back on track. staying up until the birds sing is not only a bad idea when i have work, but also when i'm working on an art project where i need to keep appointments with models. i woke up really late, probably 1230, and sable and beth were getting here around 3. so i got out of bed, didn't get a chance to shower, and went to get breakfast and some materials from walgreens. i had enough time to come back to 309 and set up for the photo session but not much time to do anything else.
sable and beth got here and i immediately started dressing sable as the mermaid. i asked beth to dj some music for us while we worked. she put on carseat headrest, a big career spanning mix. i turned on the crt and put on the hometape of raising arizona. beth fell asleep pretty soon. sable was pretty easy to dress and very good at acting & motion capture. she looks great :) i've attached some pics. it's like meeting a celebrity, finally seeing the mermaid surgeon in the flesh.
sable and i did motion capture for about an hour, probably from about 430-530. after we finished up, beth woke up & we all sat and chatted for a while. we waited until the early metal show at handlebar was over then met up with some people there for karaoke. sable & beth headed out early. i went in and got a non alcoholic heineken and a high rise thc. i signed up for a karaoke song, then sat alone and watched various people sing, waiting for my turn. i sang "wrecking ball" by gillian welch, did a pretty bad job. maybe an ok job. it was fun !
i said my goodbyes to everyone then went back to 309 to get to bed. was still very tired from the lack of sleep so i was out right away, didn't get a chance to type up a diary immediately. only two regrets from today, the 10th: 1) i didn't get sable to do a "chainsmoking" idle animation, and 2) beth was too tired to film a part. oh well, the project continues. emma comes over tomorrow to film dual parts as a pair of twins.
still in the habit of waking up late !!! i'll catch up soon, i hope. woke up in the afternoon, showered, then emma got here. i made emma wait a bit while i uploaded the shots from yesterday to my drive, was having trouble with my phone freezing during uploads. after this, she and i talked and collaborated on a list of shots & motions for her two twin characters, as well as the costume differences between them. we got her in her first costume & set up the green screen.
the shoot with emma went really well! she really took to heart the idea of returning to an idle position between different motion takes, to help the animation as a whole stay fluid. got a bunch of angles, emotions, and actions captured. maybe the most organized & professional shoot yet, as well as the least rushed. this might be the last shoot i can get in with a model before i start animating. i may need to use dolls/action figures/drawings/clay models for the rest of the characters, as i'm kinda out of friends that seem viable as willing models. oh well, i'll figure it out. i've still got myself and my own body to capture.
after we finished capturing emma's second character, emma & i watched some youtube videos for inspiration regarding simple sfx shots for her character. then we went to a card store (emma collects trading cards) so she could look around, and picked up a pizza on the way back. we came back to 309 and ate the pizza, watched a movie. she left here around 9. now it's 10 and i'm going to wind down for bed. it was a really successful couple of days ! :) now i've got to capture myself as kid crusader. then start animating. i'm guessing tomorrow will be another recharge day, like last friday was. i don't really make these decisions unforunately. wish i could give myself a jolt of energy. besides my own motion capture, i need to separate everyone's greenscreen footage into smaller, descriptively labeled clips. here's two photos from my day filming with emma:
visitor count: