Post 554 - Perplexed Pachyderm Gets a Make-Over

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

 "A Million and One Uses!"

(later - a little more detail)

also (c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Post 553 - More Visual Meatloaf - the collage test for 27 April 2023

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

 

Post 552 - Multiple Image Layer Test - Visual Meatloaf Pencil Test - 26 April 2023

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

 

Post 551 - More Pencil Tests for Unamused Founders

 Six shots, waiting for conversion to video and subsequent edit

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Post 550 - The Founders are Not Amused - pencil test

And with a bit of sound:

 (c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Post 549 - By Request

 Not sure it it'll help their cause, but it was fun to draw animals in perspective...

Sketch 1

 Sketch 2

Sketch 3 - found a use for a grumpy chicken doodle

Sketch 4 - more animals and some blending...

 

Sketch 5 - generic image, without text layer
 

Now back to animating!

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Post 548 - Forearm Pencil Test

This bit of sfumaterie may get done by summer of this year... another animated GIF "pencil test" - 

 

First at 12fps render

Then at 24fps render

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Post 547 - Thinking About Frank Zappa...

I always appreciated Frank Zappa for the solemn determination embodied in each of his performances, even if I didn't understand where things were going once his cigarette was planted atop the headstock. What was, to me, often an aural cacophony (audio anarchy?) of chaotic and tortured chords would later appear as volumes of carefully etched out musical notations - was it some mysterious, coded language daring to rewire the prefrontal cortex? A paean to a torn cuticle pulled across a G-string? An expression of space-time compression?

It all seemed ferocious, fearless - and somehow correct, if indecipherable. It was an attitude that also carried on to his prescient observations on the state of American politics, where he could slice and dice the right-wing talking heads of the Reagan era. He crammed a lot into his 52 years... if he had only not regarded cigarettes as a food...

Frank Zappa - Crossfire - 1986

Time flies

 

Post 546 - Determined Donkeys - Animated GIF "Pencil Test"

 And onward through the animal kingdom!

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

And, heck - let's toss in some electron-free music:

Post 545 - ASIFA International Announces Its 2023 International Animation Day Poster

 

(from Bri Yarhouse, IAD coordinator) 

Announcing the 2023 International Animation Day poster designed and illustrated by the legendary Georges Schwizgebel!

Born in 1944, Switzerland. 1960-65 School of Fine Arts and Decorative Arts, in 1970 he founded Studio GDS and began producing and directing animated shorts. From The Flight of Icarus (1974) to Darwin’s Notebook (2020), he has directed around twenty films, almost all of which have won international awards. Two appear on the list of the 100 most outstanding animated films established in 2006 at the Annecy festival, 78 Tours (1985) and The Ride to the Abyss (1992).

About IAD:
The International Non-Profit animation group ASIFA (Association International du Film d’Animation) created International Animation Day (IAD) in 2002, honoring the birth of animation. IAD recognizes the first public performance of projected moving images: Emile Reynaud’s Theatre Optique in Paris, on the 28th October 1892.

ASIFA coordinates and helps promote the free exchange of films with IAD celebrations all over the world, putting the art of animation in the limelight in a global celebration of animation.
ASIFA, founded in 1960, and chartered under UNESCO, strives to unite the world in peace and mutual understanding across all borders by celebrating our uniqueness and shared humanity through the art of animation. For more information see ASIFA.net

Post 544: Testing the Infamous Hall Pass - 12fps vs 24fps - Animated GIF images

Version One: at 12fps

Version Two: at 24fps

Both versions (c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Could this become another Roadshow -- uh oh!

Post 543 - Elephantine Expressions for an April Weekend

 Oh those color tests just won't stop!

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

And a bit more detail -

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

And test a mess with some layers:

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

And finally, some sound from the ol' Apothecary Archives -

thank you, Victor Herbert!

(c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Post 542 - Sermon for Easter Weekend - A Barber Weighs In

 (c) 2021, 2023, Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Post 541: Happy Easter 2023!

                                            (c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

As always, find those eggs before July - oooEEEE!

 

Post 540 - From the Scattered Chemotherapy Chronicles

Going through The Chemotherapy Chronicles of 2020, I came across this, written while waking about 4am in late January that year: 

 

The multimuffin clouds were scaled by fish atop a windowed door, an elongation by proxy, a teapod tempest, a peapod pentest,

Moonset perpendicular, rightly angled, tinfoiled again by etched acoustics,

Alight dimmed in time,

A sight trimmed with thyme

Wormwood sawdust made

I saw dust made

Rice awed dustmaidmousers met in mindful mode

Emit amid emir's, mousehair met in mindful mode

Emirs,

Emus emit

Emused eaten emissions bold

Jella jelling vogueishly

Oily cry, eugenics , missive,

freeze

Round dead fiery form, untold, untolled tiny telling tease

Mousers mighty morn.

 

It doesn't sound much better in Esperanto, either --

La multbulkaĵaj nuboj estis skvamitaj de fiŝoj sur fenestra pordo, 

plilongigo per prokura, 

teapodtempesto, peapod pentest,
Lunsubiro perpendikulara, ĝuste angula, stanfolio denove per gravurita akustiko,
Lumo malfortiĝis en tempo,
Vidaĵo tajlita per timiano
Segpolvo de absinto farita
Mi vidis polvon faritan
Rizo teruritaj polvservistinoj renkontis en atenta reĝimo
Eligi meze de emiro, musharoj renkontis en atenta reĝimo
emiroj,
Emuoj elsendas
Emused manĝita emisioj aŭdaca
Jella jeling modece
Olea krio, eŭgeniko, misivo,
frosti
Ronda morta fajra formo, nedirita, sennombra eta rakontanta inciteto
Mousers potenca mateno.

(c) 2022 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

 

Post 539 - Oh, Octopi!

                                     (c) 2023 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary