I’D BUY A DRINK FOR…

Jan Dalley, whatever she wants, up to the limit of the $20 currently in my wallet. Peter Aspden’s back on the culture beat and I will enjoy his insights, but I must admit to having had a pleasant month without him. Ms. Dalley, pick your topic and your drink, if you’re ever in the lonelypond environs. Thoughtful insights on e-altruism, opportunity and the internet business model. Loved her Kate Winslet wit and taking her Darwin/Picasso tangent transit. Thanks for the ride.

Harry Eyres also has an open invitation. Here’s his column listing Crow Chief Plenty Coups third way between despair and glory. I think this is the sort of thing that would make me a better Taoist (I’m bad at the invisible part — yes, yes, I know, major paraphrase; I’m good at the distracted by 10,000 things part).

There’s been a lot of fashion coverage in the FT recently, good tight writing, mostly tight pants, lots of Vanessa Friedman, tons of pictures, but nothing that will help me come up with a clothing theme/direction for directing Moliere. It always helps to have a style in mind (well, minor riffing on the classic me, but rehearsal indoors instead of out, with parents who aren’t used to me so slightly more formal (no shorts)). I think this situation requires a new hat.

Interesting interview with French artist Annette Messager concerning her puppet/Pinocchio pieces.

Book reviews and profile of maverick scientist and Gaia theory originator James Lovelock. Fascinating stuff.

And that’s probably enough for now, although I was glad several weeks ago when Luke Johnson admitted that perhaps he had erred in ignoring age and guile.

And I would, of course, buy Mr. Altucher or Ms. Hemming the drink of their choice any time they choose to call in my marker.

And now to sleep and dream of robots and bands and kittens and misers and jazz and if any of it is in French, I may be back. Bon nuit.

ANIMATOR’S JOURNAL

OK, I wasn’t going to put this up here, but I haven’t cracked the non WP code so here’s a peek inside my day as an animator.

I’m going to add a new feature to this and the Blink Kitty Love site, giving you a behind the scenes look at what happens when we do an episode of Gulible and Twitchy or I FlipBoom another bit of Blink Kitty Love fun. Which means I’m going to have to stop cheating and start learning how to use links in this blogging platform.

Today, we experimented with clay and stop motion as a start to our upcoming combining Shakespeare and animation project (two of the things I love most)…but for starters, we were going to do a sort of Gullible and Twitchy version of Frankenstein. We scheduled a Sunday session and shopping for clay made the to do list. I’ve always been a little afraid of clay; allergy to weird textures seems to be an issue sometimes. Didn’t have much trouble with the texture, but the smell under the lights became almost obnoxious. And end of winter is a really good time to prop open a window.

During chi gung in the morning, I came up with the idea of the cats rolling together a head, which as we worked turned into a race to complete a monster head which turned into Twitchy cheating (a very typical Twitchy thing to do).

Ended up with black and two blue clays, manufactured by Van Aken, costing $3.79 a block. We have not cracked open the darker blue one yet. I didn’t buy the smaller more bright color Van Aken ClayToons options because unlike the other clays, they were not marked non toxic. I figure maybe there’s an issue with the dyes. But two colors worked out fine and they echo the colors of Gullible and Twitchy’s traditional nemesis, the Scarecrow. And Hermunn turned out to be pretty cool.

The images are in the computer to be edited together next session, with a special effect or two added. We used Composite Lab Pro to great effect in the last Gullible and Twitchy video, Skate Street, so I’m getting more comfortable with the thought of editing in tricks and tempos. It’s been too long since I’ve had the video camera out — the battery had totally drained and most of the files in storage had been corrupted, which bites. I’m pretty sure I was just keeping them there as backup data storage so nothing lost.

All Gullible and Twitchy videos so far can be found at MyToons. Just look for the orange cats. Now time for a shower and getting the smell of heated softening plastic out of my personal airspace. Good night all.

GULLIBLE AND TWITCHY RUN FOR PRESIDENT

YOUR VOTE COUNTS:  

 

SKATE PUPPET

How can you not love them?

IN NEED OF LUNCH

Internet still a time sucking engine of chaos — sometimes chaos good; sometimes chaos bad. For a great read about the chaotic effects of butterflies, bellwethers and Barbies, read Connie Willis’s Bellwether. I myself am having a read P.G. Wodhouse urge thanks to the blurb on the cover of the FT Weekend Home and Garden section about Dahlia’s — I keep getting a mangled quote in my head about Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia vs. Aunt Agatha, the one who eats broken glass, small children and howls at the moon — I did say mangled, right.

I think I’ll give up attempts to be obsessively productive this week; finish (actually start) the Roller Derby story due next Tuesday and try again next week. I did get pastelling done and bought cool props for the new Gullible and Twitchy I’m going to shoot as soon as I have another movie night scheduled. I need to do something active like have fun with puppets. Try it yourself. It’s fun. Or at least check out Gullible and Twitchy.

Smallville season premiere tonight — Justice League, Antartica and can we hope Lois. Well, I always do. Cheers.

 

Gullible and Twitchy after a hot afternoon shooting