Golden Giraffe

Here are some progress shots from my final week of production.

I stretched and stapled my green screen fabric over my studio wall so it stayed flat.

I set up my system for the grueling task ahead.

I started applying gold leaf frame by frame as I maintained the stop-motion movement. The size can take up to half an hour to get tacky before applying the leaf. Then I take a picture, apply more of the glue, wait a bit then apply the leaf move the parts and take the next picture. Then repeat.

I started with the back legs then the front and slowly moved up to the body where the spots really begin.  I left the spots free of glue to reveal the dark wood between the gold pattern.

Slowly but surely I complete the body as it walks. It is ridiculously late and I'm losing focus. Now onto the hard part. The neck.

Finally after a grueling and late night/morning I have the first stage done all the way up to the head. I continue the stop motion movement in another session and tidy up the gold leaf. Wish I had a leaf blower. lol.  This is a big  climatic 15 second shot in my film and I'm glad I've got it in the can.

Zoobilee Zoo

It was a beautiful day outside and I took a short walk over to the zoo to sketch the Giraffes for the Onemilliongiraffes.com  project I saw on facebook.  I brought my trusty tools, and a dragon fruit to snack on.  I felt that my small gestural thumbnails were the best thing that came out of the day.  Heres some scans from the sketchbook. Pencil stuff done in HB with a mechanical pencil.

I then sat down in the dry mud where they had ripped up a whole section of the zoo to build new exhibits. There was these posts that were once a spider web playground. They had an informative panel explaining how spiders spin their webs so I jotted down the steps with my trusty Copic marker.