Sixteen Second Story Year 2

Here's the concluding video to comedian (formerly of the Professor Blastoff podcast, now leading his own stellar podcast Space Cave) David Huntsberger's year long 16 Second Story project.  It's a fun, silly, experimental animation and storytelling project expanded in sixteen second increments at David's monthly "Junk Show" variety shows, hosted at the Copper Still in Los Angeles. A person attending the show is selected to make a very short, timed introduction to a random story, which is recorded. David passes the audio to an animator, who interprets it. The audio and video are played together at the next monthly Junk Show, and another person is selected to continue the story, and the cumulative audio and video is passed on to the next animator, and so on..for twelve consecutive months, and music is added in the final presentation (Last year's project, with music by Rob Crow-- is here and my animated contribution is 2:50-3:06) My portion in the embedded video below is from 2:05-2:21. Music by Ryan McWilliams.

Animators, seasoned or even very amateur, if you'd like to play a part in this year's upcoming Sixteen Second Story cycle, get in touch with David through twitter or his website.  As you see, there's a lot of variety in the work in terms of style and technical approaches. If you think you'd like a chance to experiment with it, go for it! The two most important aspects of participating are 1) you could finish 16 seconds of work in a month's time (easy enough) and can be counted on to carry the ball for that month to the due date and 2) Have fun!

Link to video here for smartphones

Animation updates

(Steps out to the quiet inky dark field just past the witching hour, to the sound of crickets....)

Hello.

I've been working on what has turned out to be an unexpectedly long term project for a very short length video. It will clock under two minutes, but is the most elaborate animation I've worked on so far. There's lots of layers of movement in this. Sometimes it took a week for only five seconds in some clips. It will be paired with a song by a favorite musician I've followed for years.

As I had the pleasure of hearing this particular song played live, an idea began to take root, which branched off into more ideas, and I thought damn, now I have to do this. It hasn't been a practical direction to take with my visual art (not that "practical" is or should be linked with art, yet it asserts it's charmless presence too often when I'm trying to enter a creative mindset)  , but it is one that kept me excited and motivated, even if it takes embarrassingly long to do at my skill level. I enjoy the short storytelling visual format that animation allows me.

Part of the story is about the joy and danger of futile pursuits. Another is the attractive pull and destructive force of opposite worlds colliding, and the new creative elements that comes from all that. It starts on a quantum level and pulls out to whole universes, with two fantasy stories of elements from those different universes influencing each other, and making inadvertent and destructive contact.

I've wanted to make a work that isn't bound by deadlines, but to the best of my (admittedly limited) technical abilities with animation at the moment. There's so much to learn, it's overwhelming.

I'm hoping to have it wrapped up by this month. That's the goal, anyway.

Here's a few soundless preview clips:

                                          

                                          

and a few earthlike planets: 

and some stills.......

Update on the David Huntsberger project I contributed to: The DVD has been out and available for purchase, and it is also viewable on Vimeo. I recommend ordering the DVD as you have the viewing option of seeing all the animators work uncut for each standup piece David performed. That said, I also recommend seeing the stage/costume design, the standup and animator work cut and combined for the full collaborative presentation. http://www.davidhuntsberger.com/2015/10/one-headed-beast-available-for-pre-order/