Forward Motion

Jason installing a desk.
Camille (in safety orange) painting our new frame.
Alex installing lighting.

Building

Tiny Circus begins for summer 2009! We are cleaning and preparing for our first official day on June 1.
Last summer we waited until dark to begin shooting so that our lighting would be constant. Often, we got very tired by the time we were finished. We decided to build a dedicated room in our studio so that we can shoot our animations during the day.

The room is about 10'x10'. John came from Iowa City to help build. We installed the first three walls after building them on the floor in the studio. Then the room started to get a bit small with the new walls in place, so we screwed together the final wall on the cement outside the studio.
...and then took it apart again after we realized that it wouldn't fit through the door...Walls in place, Camille and John installing drywall. Tomorrow, more cleaning and building.

Springtime for Tiny Circus!!

History of Repetition. 

More Tools and Babies

Another new tool. This rack will help us hold animation characters in place when we are shooting. The wall behind it is covered with a sheet of metal so that objects can be magnet-stuck in place. The size of the frame can be adjusted and parts can be added as sets change.

This is an LED light controller. The dials on the bottom dim the lights individually (16 in all). Lights in houses, stars, or tiny spotlights for animation characters...

Two of our 10 Indian Runner Ducks. Halifax (left) and Algonquin. 2 weeks old or so, growing fast. These circus members were inspired by Suzie Templeton's animation Peter and the Wolf.
Tall enough to look out of the box the last few days.
Halifax is smaller than Algonquin, but has Big Duck Spirit. Here, flapping wings after a bath.

New Bits

Aleah sewed up this Tiny Circus flag last fall. It's lovely and will fly over the circus when it roams.






TC will have some new tools come summer. Here, some armatures. They use ball and socket joints to make small controlled movements possible. The bolt on the side can be adjusted for the correct tension. These can be used to fly things through a scene (with the armature removed digitally later on), or reconfigured to fit inside a creature to make movement possible.

Magic Brainstorming

Tiny Circus at Albion College votes on a subject for a history. Poor electricity.


The second round led us to magic, beating out cotton candy by a single vote!

TC in Michigan

Tiny Circus is back in action, at Albion College in Michigan.

We are just getting started and today we tried an experiment - improvising an animation. We tacked a large piece of paper to a sheet of metal, then set up the camera and used charcoal and paper glued to magnets to make our animation. This is a crew of new animators and it worked well as an introduction to techniques.

More to come!