Let me first explain to you the first word of the title here. Inspired. On a daily basis, there are so many people that inspire the crap out of me that making a list of them becomes completely useless. Every so often, however, someone really strikes a chord in me. Quite literally, in fact. I was recently at a small concert in Allston in which my current favorite singer, Lisa Hannigan was co-headlining. The venue was so intimate, and the nature of her music so simple and enchanting at times, that I really and honestly thought to myself, "Well, gosh darnit, Kristy, why don't you try making some music?" I mean, I've always wished to be able to express myself musically, but there it was, that pang to do something. A quite powerful pang. I acknowledged it, and plan not to ignore it.
Now, this next project will not necessarily involve music or making music, but it may. Instead, I wanted to draw upon the pang I felt and the excitement that swelled deep within me at the thought of creating music... even bad music.
I felt that pang again yesterday, while watching YouTube. I stumbled upon a brother duo who call themselves "The Fu" who write original music as well as doing some cover songs. They do not, however, simply plop themselves in front of the camera, press record, and play. Instead, they make these elaborate and sophisticated music videos that are funny, clever, imaginative, and riveting, amongst other adjectives that I could use. Oh yes, other adjectives like inspiring.
The most inspiring of their videos (links below) happened to be the ones in which they used animation to tell the story of the music they were playing. The use a method of animation that I am familiar with from college called stop-motion.
Now, it's been about a decade (holy bejesus) since I took my undergraduate animation class, but I remember absolutely loving it. The whole class was solely focused on stop-motion animation. We had fancy cameras hooked to video tapes back then (yes, VHS tapes), but I am absolutely sure that my iPhone and applications within my MacBook Pro--and maybe even my old iMac that has Photoshop and (I hope) Flash--will be enough to carry me through this venture. Technology has made a lot of things way more accessible to the world and I hope to be able to harness some of that correctly to make the project a feasible feat. Fingers figuratively crossed.
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Cool New Project #2: Inspired Animation
Objectives: (1) Create stop-motion video animation using technology I currently have at my immediate disposal. (2) Somehow export/upload/post animation(s) to this blog for public viewing.
Timeline: TBD--I think I'll need to break this into baby pieces and create mini do-able deadlines for myself so that this seems less daunting. By the end of this week, I will post my plan to break this project into bite-sized chunks. Be on the lookout.
Possible Roadblocks: Lack of either technical prowess or video savvy, my life-long battle with stifling perfectionism, the sheer amount of behind-the-scenes work/time necessary to make even as little as ten seconds of animation.
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Here are my favorite stop-motion animation videos from The Fu:
1. We Say Hallo
2. Me and You
I left a comment on the "We Say Hallo" video and they answered me right away. Hooray!
And just for fun... more stop-motion music videos:
3. In Your Arms by Kina Grannis (Keep in mind that this particular video took two years and a crew of thirty people to accomplish.)
4. Turned of the TV by Lessang (This was a pretty racy video for Korea, so I heard that it got banned from music television. I might have gotten that fact wrong, though.)
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