I've just recieved my special handmade christmas present from Shelley and Paul (#5 of 80)! Wow, finally I see what all those painstakingly cut pieces of paper came together to create! And this is something really special... it's a little automaton folks! I really wish I could do what I originally wanted to do the second I opened the envelope and was greeted by this cheery little fellow, but unfortunately I no longer seem to have the ability to take pictures or do animation on my computer (long and painful stoy... some other time) so all I could do is shoot this crappy little bit of hand puppetry using iMovie:
Floppyelf
My first impulse was to animate him... after all, he's essentially a cutout animation puppet on a stick! But Framethief now steadfastly refuses to recognize the exact same camera setup it once integrated with beautifully (though iMovie has no problem strangely), so this is all i could do, and even iMovie is giving me fits. It won't run for more than maybe two or three minutes before spazzing out and causing a system failure. So I wasn't even able to get a better clip than the one I posted.
I also wanted to post a nice close-up picture of the guy from each side (they're slightly differet, so when you spin him around the face animates while the arms and legs wave up and down delightfully) and of the beautiful card included with him. But alas, it's not to be. Hopefully one of my cohorts can do it justice where I'm unable to.
But meanwhile... wow!!! Hey, I just realized, not only is this Shelley's first completed puppet, but she's making 50 of them (or 80?)... or I suppose Himself is making his share as well, but at any rate, what an incredible assembly line they've got going - a couple of christmas elves laboring away to being joy and cheer to their friends!
Well done you two!
edit
Obviously I've now gained the capability to take pictures once again! Just got myself a nifty little Kodak Easyshare digital camera, basically a bonus from the workplace (ok, actually I put together a couple pof bonuses... their idea of a bonus is a Wal-Mart gift card!)
2 comments:
Tew-tally laughing my ass off, Mike! Thanks so much for making a clipi!! I was hoping somebody would be inspired to play wit 'em!! Yay!
And, guess, what. I'm making 85 of them, all alone. Sniff. Paul was away working during Santa's workshop and only approved when I showed him the sample. So there was that. It's CRAZY I tell ya!
I go from pure and utter joy over how fun they are to share with friends and loved ones (tee hee) to a periodic toggle switch slam of feeling like I'm in a perverse Soviet Gulag at the North Pole via Siberia (yikes!).
35 more to go TONIGHT! Fred and Ginger are helping set the mood.
Yeah, this is really an awful lot of work for one lone elf! Next year you might consider getting the neighborhood kids together for a little cutting and pasting, maybe bill it as an educational workshop and free babysitting at the same time. Of course that would be a completely different kind of frustration, dealing with hordes of kiddies rather than docile paper and scissors.
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