Welcome back dear reader. As promised lat night, I’m presenting a new project this evening and I’m actually finished ahead of schedule (take a picture it doesn’t happen often). So what’s it all about? Well, I won’t rehash yesterday’s post, but I’ll simply say that I’m currently working on an animated manip of epic proportion (in terms of complexity and work-load) and, frankly, I needed a break from it.
I came across a picture set a week or two ago that reached out from the monitor and slapped me in the face screaming MANIP ME, MANIP ME STUPID MONKEY!!! I love to work on those pieces that come together in an instant. Its not always the first time I look at a pic (though it was in this case), but when the story and the imagery leap into my mind in a single instant of inspiration, that’s a project worth taking on.
So, having had this sudden burst from the muse, I decided to take a break from the behemoth manip, and just put foot to pedal and complete this one in record time. In in that regard, I’ve succeeded. You’re bound to notice spelling mistakes. The compisiting isn’t nearly as polished as I usually prefer it to be. But, that wasn’t the point in a sense. The point was to do something fun and inspired and, again, in that regard I succeeded.
When I did my first snake-on-woman hypno manip, it was born out of a feeling it was a sub-genre lacking in representation. Since then, I’ve found numerous artists on the Collective that have done work along similar lines and, of course, Kaa from Disney’s animated Jungle Book film is usually in a starring role. In looking back on my original effort, I realized that I hadn’t really nailed the animation with the eyes. Looking at the film again, I realized that I just whipped up something that seemed correct, but I’ve been thinking about doing another snake-hypno piece, if for no other reason, to take another swing at nailing the distinctive Kaa hypnosis look.
So, that too was on my mind when I sat down to tackle this side-project and, again, I’m quite happy with the results.
Lastly, I’ve been anxious to try out a new tool called Adobe Flash Catalyst. Its designed as a UI to Adobe Flash and (in theory) would allow a person to develop simple Flash applications (like a picture gallery or slideshow) quickly and without writing code. I’ve been desperately searching for a tool like this for months and this project was a great chance to do some testing and see if it lived up to the tag-line.
Which by-and-large it did. I was able to very quickly assemble all my finished panels into an animated Flash slideshow in far less time than it took me to research, code, and troubleshoot the Action Script for my last animated manip. Its not feature complete; I would have desperately loved to include a soft music track playing with the images* but this software is very exciting as it will allow me to assemble interactive manip projects in a matter of hours instead of (literally) months.
So, going in to this new piece, I had a lot of things on my mind and, for what its worth, I feel enormously content with the end result with respect to each of the qualities I’ve mentioned. As for whether or not YOU enjoy it as a reader? Well, I should probably shut up and let you see it.
I do hope you enjoy Kia and Kaa.
-Callidus
*If you’re curious about what music I had planned to include, it was this haunting rendition of ‘Trust in Me’ by the Soul Flutes. Give it a spin as you view the manip for full effect.