Nicholas Hancock recorded this rap version of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" for a school project in High School, years back, and we've said for years that we ought to make some kind of video to go with it. Last year, we picked up a black bird seasonal decoration at a local store, and I got the idea to try something with stop motion.

This is my very first stop-motion project! So I decided to keep things extremely simple. No armatures or fancy effects, just a bunch of winter squash on a miniature stage. And the black bird, of course.

I did consider adding a face & mouth to the rapping squash, but decided to leave it as-is.

It seems appropriately Halloweeny -- although the action in the poem is actually set in December.

This is also the beginning of a new personal project of creating short complete experimental projects each month. That's the plan, anyway.

There is also a Making of Raven Rap Timelapse.

This film is 120 years old this year!

It is the only-slightly-lesser-known Georges Méliès science fiction film,

The film itself is scanned from a hand-colored original, and is presented

Of course, this was originally a silent film, which would've typically been

Please share as widely as you like, and if you want to say thanks, support

There is also a Making of Impossible Voyage Techno/FX Edition Timelapse.

When MidJourney and Craiyon hit the Internet in Summer of 2022, I did a lot of experiments to see what could be done with them.

I also wanted to see just how much animation I could squeeze out by only using effects in Kdenlive (no Blender or Synfig or other animation tools). I did not want to go much beyond moving cut-outs, so this is more "motion graphic" than "animation".

Like many AI Art projects, this one comes across as a little creepy.

I created (evoked?) the individual cel assets with MidJourney, then used the "rotoscope" in Kdenlive to cut them out, and various effects to create motion.

My notion was that this is an ocean shore on some alien planet, where a spacecraft has crashed, leaving debris washing up on the shore. So it's meant to be a dirty seashore, and the sky suggests the atmosphere is not quite Earth-like (but I guess breathable?).

I imagined that perhaps giant genetically-engineered beetles might be involved, and who knows what's going one with the organic-looking balloon?

I originally posted this test directly on my Mastodon account, but that's no longer present, so I want to have a copy up on my PeerTube. (Reposted in January 2024).

Screencast video with commentary, showing how I used a physics-simulation "ragdoll rig" for Georgiana's "Space Bunny" ragdoll.

I was having trouble animating this, and decided that it might be better to rig the doll using simulation. After a long time, I've finally gotten around to doing this!

I learned this technique from a couple of CG Cookie tutorials from several years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HryXEpIz-cg

I haven't changed very much from that technique, except to adapt it to our model.

The "Space Bunny" ragdoll prop was modeled and rigged by Keneisha Perry for Lunatics Project.

Third of three parts of an introduction to my "LunaGen" software.

Transcript:

PT 3: USE

--

Now, let's take a look at the code.

--

First of all,

The skeleton

Each of these is a tree of folders and files,

Then you will run LunaGen on them,

Currently, this is all there is,

--

As a site developer using LunaGen,

The structural division is intended

The skeleton is the base of your page.

It's also the primary way to provide images

If your site doesn't require much of the latter,

--

The "theme" allows you to choose

You might decide, for example,

Or, you might want to use an existing theme,

The theme can also override design decisions

These usually provide top-level functionality

Which a theme designer can alter.

A theme consists mainly of a collection

It may also include its own 'skeleton' folder,

--

In turn, your site's "templates" folder

This allows for theme customizations just

It's also the practical way to add complex,

It, too, may contain its own skeleton,

It's up to you whether you want to put something

I would suggest that images that are solely part

Again, once you've chosen a theme

--

And so that brings us to the day-to-day

This is a file tree,

It can also have text files,

None of that is implemented, though,

More significantly,

For example, the "series of episodes"

The YAML files in this tree also

This is where you specify your chosen theme,

Specific data needed for LunaGen extensions

--

The idea is that you set up your site with a

Whenever you add content,

Since all the style information is in the skeleton

Heavy design work isn't necessary,

Alternatively,

--

I hope this introduction is useful. I may follow

Thank you for watching!

The second of three parts of an introduction to my "LunaGen" software.

Transcript:

PT2: IMPLEMENTATION

--

Since I am both the user and developer

The structured data language is YAML.

The templating language is Jinja2.

And it's tied together with Python.

In fact, most of the functionality of LunaGen

The Python code is quite tiny and simple.

In the simple case,

Even if the page consists primarily of

We only really need Python manipulations

--

--

And we need Python to handle interlaced content,

This is a simple alternation pattern

We thus apply the Jinja2 templates

This is how you get the page structure you

This is how I handle things like

These secondary blocks can appear

--

The first of three parts of an introduction to my "LunaGen" software.

Transcript:

What is LunaGen?

When I was setting up my new site for Lunatics Project,

I was disatisfied with the options I could find

So I created my own "Lunatics Site Generator",

This is a presentation of my design concept,

requirements,

--

PT 1: REQUIREMENTS

I wanted a page that would be served statically

Many popular web applications, including Wordpress,

Each time you visit one of those sites,

After that, your own computer might do some more work,

--

That's a lot of complexity, and the important thing is:

It happens EACH TIME someone visits the page.

That's fine, if you only get a 100 hits a day. It might

But if you get a MILLION hits a day, and the webpages are

which, can mean your server crashes

--

By contrast, for a static website, all the generation

When a user asks for the page,

A well-configured web server might even cache that data

--

A static page doesn't have to be unchanging.

For example, it might include a clock,

But it is NOT updated each time you ask for it.

If it is updated too frequently,

But the point is that not much of the load

So it is more predictable, and less vulnerable to

--

It also has a significant advantage

The server doesn't need to know anything about

And it doesn't take any input from you.

That, by itself,

And it defeats most kinds of attacks.

I also wanted the page to be simple and lightweight.

--

Besides being statically served,

That means less load on the server,

Also less time to download the page,

And,

This makes the page seem a lot faster.

--

These factors were all important to me

And also, because we don't really have

And because, as we are a creative project

I mean,

But I like to plan

--

I also wanted my page to be easy to update,

--

We are basically producing video and audio series.

Our release page should make it easy

This is the kind of structure you see

Which are obviously static menus.

A lot of web applications,

That is, it is more important to them

That turns up all the time,

The site mechanisms aren't really set up

--

What's more,

If I were to release my series

That seemed like a lot of hassle.

So I decided against using

--

What I wanted was to be able to simply update a

That suggested that

This would then be combined

It's fundamentally like a data-driven page,

--

Finally, I wanted a site that would allow for

--

I don't wish to become a "platform" site.

Nor do I want to be too attached

I don't want to be a "YouTuber",

We do need financial support to keep going,

So I wanted to be able to embed "calls to action"

Not hidden away somewhere,

So much stuff is published "for free",

It would be easy for fans to imagine

I want to make sure the donation hat is clearly visible!

On the other hand, I don't want gross pop-up ads

So my design needs to naturally allow

--

After determining that none of the available

I decided I would write my own site generator.

I'd try to keep the scope small,

Teaser for upcoming motion comic animated episode 4 of "Pepper & Carrot".

Teaser for upcoming episode 3, "The Secret Ingredients", in which Pepper meets Saffron in the marketplace and learns about the Potion Contest.

THIS VIDEO HAS SOME VERY LOUD AND HIGH-PITCHED TEST-PATTERN SOUNDS: CAREFUL WITH YOUR VOLUME!

For writing my unit and functional tests for Lib-Ray, I need to have some video to work with. It needs to have some calibration and test-pattern elements, but also some "real" video to test subjectively how well it's going. Fortunately, I have access to footage from several free / open movie projects to draw on, and the result is kind of a fun "sampler" of open movie work that is about 7 minutes long.