About My Animation

I make short experimental animated films by drawing on 3X5 inch index cards. My films usually have an autobiographical aspect to them, or at least draw heavily on my day to day experiences. "Animation" conjures up mental images of cartoons -- but I like to think of mine as "moving drawings". I don't take the usual animator's shortcuts (cels, computer programs, etc.) because for me, it's all about drawing... and drawing, and drawing, and drawing.... It could be described as visual poetry, or the choreography of lines & color on paper. Usually I get local musicians to create a musical track to go along with the picture.

My films all run at 12 drawing per second; I've played around with different rates but always come back to 12, it just looks right to me. My specialty is morphing one drawing into another, and for this I use a powerful light table which allows me to see through three or four index cards. I draw in pencil, pen, marker and whatever else suits the work at hand. To get the drawings onto film, I scan them on a regular flatbed scanner (except for my older films, which were shot on 16mm film and later transfered to video). The scanned drawings are then imported into video editing software, which shows them at a rate of 12 per second. Lately, I've been using Photoshop to adjust the tones and contrast of my drawings. For example, I might select the entire background in a sequence of drawings, and darken it to make the foreground pop out more. I also use Photoshop to correct mistakes, saving me from having to re-do an entire drawing because of a little ink splotch.