Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown

From Gatlinburg, the circus headed 1004 miles north to Provincetown, Massachusetts to teach another animation class. 

Our studio was in a renovated lumber-yard at the Fine Arts Work Center.  Class participants divided into groups to brainstorm short animations.

Storyboarding "Hell or High Water".

Animating a soggy marshmallow.

The finished animation, a beautiful little short.  Tiny Circus heads south next to Elsewhere, in Greensboro, NC. 

Arrowmont School of Art and Craft

 Tiny Circus traveled to Gatlinburg, TN, land of swimming holes and bears, to teach an animation class at the Arrowmont school.  Class participants began by illustrating an common idiom (a stitch in time saves nine) to learn various animating processes

Next, the class turned to a more familiar topic and began to created an animated bear trap.

 Here, animating a chair lift behind a scene of Gatlinburg. 

 Creating a cardboard bear trap, spray painted gold, of course. 

It was a great week with many trips to swim and some late-night animating with a corn-dog.  We'll be back soon.  Check our youtube page for the final version of the animation.

Characters

 

Our resident hedgehog has headed home to Kansas City - the circus is winding down for the summer.   

Over the last two weeks, we've been working on character development.  Six circus performers evolved from our 6-week brainstorm, each has a back-story and musical theme.  Each is the product of intense collaboration - and multiple generations of refinements. 

Our Wednesday night community meals - ducks, food, a film, and backyard community. 

 Here, Marty begins to take shape around her hand-machined armature. 

The circus collaborated to create musical themes for each of the characters as well.

The Tiny Attic Circus of Lincoln, Nebraska took Sheva the fire-breather and Maestra the ring leader home to do some design work - they sent wonderful creations back to Tiny Circus Base Camp for finishing touches. 

A happy circus at the Danish Maid bakery.  A regular stop both in the day-time, and often at 2 AM for fresh 'nuts. 

Our tiny tiny circus is becoming more and more plausible by the day! It took us a few trials, but we are finally getting the strong man to be animate-able after a couple skeletal surgeries...

We've also been spending some time figuring out the logistics of the set for the Archival Room. Hannah did a great job drawing out our ideas and figuring out how to construct lots of tiny boxes.

And we're getting closer and closer to creating our vision of the human cannonball. He's even got his own theme song in the works.

All in all, we're having a great time seeing things come together and come to life!

Truckin' Along

Tiny Circus is still truckin' along and everyone is making good progress on their projects. We are continuing to develop our circus characters, making adjustments to personalities and materials to create the most compelling juggler, strong man, and human canonball that we can! In our quest to improve our animating process, we welcomed the help from a neighbor on developing our own green/blue screen.

And so, animation has begun! The Strongman lives...with a few creaky bolts, but he lives!

To bring our characters' personalities to life, we've also started producing a theme song for each one. You have not been truly moved until you have seen Emile the juggler weep to his own personal accordion music.

When not animating, the circus picked out colors to paint the outside of the circus house!





...and then we went to work! the painting looks terrific!



A hello from the Tiny Circus, especially to the Circusers who have left recently!

It has been quite the roller coaster here at the Tiny Circus over the past few days. But rain or shine, we're still having agood time!

We've had to say goodbye to a handful of members, including our impromptu deejay Mike, who has given us many memorable dance parties.

We've been plugging away on character development, as well as improving our living quarters.

We've made sure to stay hydrated in the summer heat, and well-fed. With so many people around and a rapidly growing garden, we're always bound to have delicious food.

The ducks are growing, too...

Sweet Rewards

We've been crossing more and more Tiny Circus TO-DO's off of our handy dandy new chalkboard lately. The shelf of finished characters is starting to fill up, the makings of different props are popping up in the studio, brainstorming ideas are quickly evolving into a full-on storyline. To celebrate our progress a group of circus members hit the local ice cream stand for some sweet hard-earned treats. We also took a day off to recharge our batteries and celebrate the summer solstice by going out to a nearby lake for an impromptu beach barbeque. The summer season is officially upon us.

After making miniature ice creams for a project:

Some circus members went out for the real thing: