This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.
Lots of cut paper in this one!
“A film for 4th Estate Publishers’ 25th Anniversary. Produced by Apt Studio and Asylum Films. The film was produced in stop-motion over 3 weeks in Autumn 2008. Each scene was shot on a home-made dolly by an insane bunch of animators; you can see time-lapse films of each sequence being prepared and shot in our other films. ”
Dream House #1, 8″ x 11″
I think I have found a new obsession. And while you might not believe this, it *isn’t* low-light photography. (Curse these gloomy afternoons!)
Working a papercut is a delightful combination of two of my favourite things; illustration and craft. For me, the excuse to get away from the computer, on which I do most of my illustration work, and slowly carve out an image with my hands is amazingly exciting.
Luckily the girls played happily together yesterday (mostly) so I got a good chunk of time to slice away at this with my new knife (beautiful sharp blades! I only used one for this but I probably should have switched it out for another as it was starting to drag towards the end), my little snippity-snip scissors and my new fine paper.
I loved working out the design. I drew it completely in my sketchbook first rather than leaving anything to chance as I just don’t have the skills or confidence (or talent!) to go it freestyle as Elsita does. I decided I wanted some parts to be completely symmetrical like the traditional German papercuts (thanks to Amy for putting me on to that) which I cut first and some parts I wanted to be asymmetrical which I went back and cut after I had flattened out the paper again.
Wanna do some? I found these helpful: Martha Stewart cutting a symmetrical paper valentine. The Skinny laMinx tutorial is good too. Of course, there are bazillions of links in Elsita’s sidebars so do check those out too. I love the shadow work of Andrea Dezsö.
Speaking of folded paper and symmetry – Wow!
So – My creative space yesterday was the kitchen table. I had Amelia home sick from school and when she wasn’t drawing or driving me crazy, she commandeered my computer to play mathletics so I was left twiddling my thumbs. This ended up being a very good thing because it forced me away from twitter and google reader et al and into the studio where I found the pair of tiny little scissors I bought a while back for the purpose of creating some papercuts. I have been wanting to have a go at this for a long time, inspired by the great papercut goddesses Amy Karol and Elsita Mora, and the papercut guru Rob Ryan. Watching the Miso + Ghost Patrol doco on the ABC just nailed it for me.
I have always had a huge passion for silhouette art works – probably because of some of Jan Pienkowski books full of fantastical scenes or those Dover books full of quaint vignettes.
Papercuts seem like the perfect way to get that contrast and the drama of shape and line. Obviously Pienkowski (above) could get a huge amount of detail using pen and ink but have you seen Elsita’s papercuts? (of course you have!) … I look at them and GASP at the detail.
I am definitely not so impressed with my first effort but I thought I would publish it anyway to show a “starting point”. I rushed my design and then added bits spontaneously. I had a ratty toddler jiggling constantly at my elbow and a mathlete across the table stressing as she competed online against a boy-genius from Qatar. I had a blunt knife, a wrecked cutting mat, a crappy pair of scissors and my two layers of paper seemed to be unforgiving so my first effort is pretty awful (a good craftswoman *always* blames her tools) but I have dashed out this morning, and bought a tonne of new blades and a better cutting mat and some fine black paper so we’re all systems go. While I found the process frustrating yesterday (I think it might have been easier to fold some of those complex origami planes!), I can completely understand how it could be quite addictive and even quite meditative.
(How come Rob Ryan’s fingers aren’t covered in bandaids?)
