March's Animation

So there I was, in the dead of February, thinking: I need to learn a new skill.

I looked up 'felting kits' on Amazon.ca and decided to watch youtube videos on how to felt small things. On the subway and even during down times at work, I poked away in excitement.

Felting is relatively easy, and in this case, it was pretty inexpensive ($30 with shipping).

A friend of mine is in the process of opening a brewery (halo) and they came into my work one day looking for bees for a photoshoot. We didn't have any fake bees, but I thought: "hey, I could make bees!" And so I did.

The perfect practice run for what was to come.

I knew for March I wanted to animate felt. I didn't know what or how, but I couldn't stop thinking about The Fight by Marc James Roels.

When I posted the chameleon video on facebook, another friend of mine said : "DO A KITTY WOOING ANOTHER KITTY"! And so I did.

I started by using pipe-cleaners for the armatures. That way I could poke through the puppet and it would still be able to hold itself into any position. (Thanks youtube tutorials.)

I learned that it can really hurt when you poke yourself with the needle.

THAT'S WHY the kit came with a giant piece of foam... always use it as your workspace.

One kitty quickly became two!

I contemplated eyes and mouths, but was satisfied with this look for the puppets as they seemed very expressive.

Then came the alley: 2 pieces of black foamcore on top of a few cork sheets so I could pin down the puppets. If you look closely, you can see one of the pins in the video... Wish I had caught that at the time. The buildings were constructed out of card stock.

I would have liked to have spent a little more time on the buildings and the alley persay, but I didn't bother because the main focus were the cat puppets. The other thing was my deadline. An animation per month is quite challenging, but I know I need to set deadlines for myself.

Otherwise, I don't do the work!

Anyways, I'm pretty happy with this one. It's cute.