I'm stunned!! It's been so long since I heard any news about this, I had pretty much given up hope of it ever happening. But I just checked in at SMA and discovered the announcement. Here's a direct link to the archive for anybody who remembers it or who might be interested to see where it all began:
StopMotionAnimation.Com Archive
Of course I'll add it to the sidebar as well for permanent linkage.
A million thanks to Paul McConnochie, who has faithfully stored it all on a hard drive all this time and apparently has put in a lot of work creating the archive version. I have no idea what kind of work is involved in doing something like that, but I do know how much material he had to sort through, being personally responsible for a vast amount of it. And of course another million thanks to the site's creator and owner Anthony Scott, without whom it never would have existed at all!
I must admit, due to the silence on the issue I as well as many other members lost hope and assumed nothing was being done, and I grumbled a few times that we'd never see it again. I honestly believed all those posts were gone forever, and I felt it as a devastating blow. That site had become a home to me, and a source of neverending inspiration and knowledge about the artform I had come to love so much.
It was much more than that though - it also served as a repository for arcane knowledge and information that quite possibly does not exist anywhere else - from professionals who worked in the stopmotion industry when the giant creatures still roamed their stomping grounds at 24 frames per second, before the specter of CGI replaced them with sleek computer generated ones. The threads there contain incredible amounts of information on everything from tips and tricks to help people make their own stopmotion films at home to mind blowing facts and trivia concerning many of the classic films and animators. Especially with regards to King Kong (the one and only original) - that subject would bring in people who didn't participate on any other subject and who had an encyclopedic knowledge about the film.
Well ok, I better stop before the tears start to flow. I've been extremely busy lately - often too busy to even check in at the new SMA board, which is why I didn't see the announcement until now (need to check and see when it went up). But now I can see I'm going to be spending some reminiscing time browsing the old memories..
3 comments:
Hello. Wondering, did you draw your dreamviews.com profile pic and banner (with the suns in 'em)?
Also, nice intro! Though I've reason to doubt dark matter's mere existence, but what you wrote was very beautiful~ :}
Hi Yopu, no, I found those images online. In a sense they're similar to what dark matter means to me - it's the contrast of light and dark, the yin/yang nature of one needing the other to define itself. I'm also somewhat doubtful about the actual existence of dark matter, but the idea is metaphorical, you know. You seem to get that. It's more about the fact that we don't understand everything, that there will always be mystery, and that we NEED that mystery. Darkness and dark matter are just representative of that idea.
Hey Mikey, the SMA site doesn't allow interaction anymore, so this is my only way to still contact you.
I'm making that 2014 film! The one about anxiety. It got abandoned only weeks into preproduction because the store bought clay was too soft and the lights were too hot to make a clay lamp. It is back with LED lighting, a solid script, a real-sounding orchestral score, Puppet Putty as far as the eye can seeeeee, and a comfy apple box chair with a pillow on it. Started shooting Saturday. Thrilled purple with green polka dots to be animating again. There's nothin' like it.
Tag, you're it!
*runs away*
-Don C.
@prammaven on IG
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