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Courtney Hoskins

Writer/Director

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Obama in 30 seconds

It's a little late to be posting this- voting closed a long while ago. I felt it was appropriate, though, seeing as how it looks like Mr. Obama is going to be our Democratic nominee. It's also appropriate because, well, I actually have time to post it! It looks best if you click play and then the little "monitor" icon in the middle of the right hand side to play it full screen. It was drawn in pencil. At such a small size, it's pretty hard to see. I made this for moveon.org's contest called "Obama in 30 Seconds." Obama was my second favorite Democratic nominee (and no, Clinton was not my first, though I liked her too). I really do like the guy, though, and I'm happy to vote for him. Politics aside, there was a $20,000 prize (redeemable in video equipment) and it gave me a chance to play with character animation. I drew several pictures that I scanned and animated in Flash. The lip sync was a little tricky because Flash seemed to want to play the video and the audio at two different frame rates, so I just had to trust my dope sheet (I'll try to post a page from that tomorrow and explain what it is). The animation is a little... basic... but it was my first full-blown character animation with lip sync and it was supposed to look "grassroots" (which is now an adjective). It's really amazing to see a character that you drew come to life before your very eyes. Carl Fuermann was the voice of America.

(Note: heated/bigoted/negative political comments to this post will be deleted- sorry, but that's what every blog seems to become these days and no one ever said mine was a democracy! I alone hold the power of comment approval! Mwa ha ha ha!)

tags: animation, barack obama, cartoon, hand drawn, move on, moveon
categories: animation, art, web development
Wednesday 06.04.08
Posted by Courtney Hoskins
Comments: 6
 

Snow Flukes

Next up: "Snow Flukes" I'm going a little bit out of sequence, but this was the next video that I felt like publishing. This is "Snow Flukes." I happened upon this 16mm silhouette footage several years ago. I was told that the artist who drew the cartoons was Otto Messmer (Felix the Cat) and that the skater is Dorothy Hamill, but I'm not sure. All of my searching has turned up very little on this little film.

I'm glad I have breathed some new life into it (and I always credit Otto and have never made a cent off of it- I'm really not sure if this footage ever fell into the public domain). The "psychedelic" background is shrink wrap and the skater is made of the same liquid crystal paint that went into "The Light Touch Dust Nebula" (ah, that's probably why I felt like following it with this video). I really love the fact that a paint activated by heat can be made to look like snow (note: this film is also silent):

tags: animation, cartoon, cat, experimental film, found footage, liquid crystal, short film
categories: animation
Monday 12.10.07
Posted by Courtney Hoskins
 

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