What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Talking about art and animation for a change.

The post Interview with Becky Neiman appeared first on Nina Paley.

I chose this Christian Crowdfunding platform because they claim to not cancel people (unlike this one) and because this particular project should appeal to Christians, as they are the Book of Revelation’s biggest fandom. https://www.givesendgo.com/apocalypseanimated

The post Apocalypse Animated Lenticular Cards Crowdfunder appeared first on Nina Paley.

In addition to the swell multi-frame animated lenticulars, I’ve also been working on fake quasi 3-D lenticular cards from a printer in China. These are much less expensive, but only allow 2 frames per card. I don’t use 3D software, so to achieve this quasi-3D look I move elements around manually. Here are my designs as 2-frame gifs; hopefully behind a lenticular lens they’ll fool the eye/brain into seeing depth.

The post Quasi 3-D appeared first on Nina Paley.

There’s now an APOCALYPSE ANIMATED APP! It lets you store the entire Book of Revelation with almost 300 animated loops on your own device(s). Never again rely on iffy internet for your Apocalypse needs! Engineered by Atul Varma, currently for iPhone only. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apocalypse-animated/id1610949716

The post App-ocalypse appeared first on Nina Paley.

I just got my test batch from the printer and they look as good in real life as they do in this video. (One of 8 in the video was printed at the wrong orientation, so that one is not offered, but it leaves 7 which was my goal anyway). Order yours here: https://apocalypseanimated.com/store/

Currently unsigned only, to US addresses only. I will offer more expensive, signed and numbered sets of 7 later. These are cheaper (but still expensive! Sorry, custom lenticulars ain’t cheap) because they ship directly from the printer. I’m also working on ...

I’m exploring custom lenticular prints of loops from ApocalypseAnimated.com. I still don’t have them in hand; the first tests arrive in hand next week. Here’s a preview video from the printer of the design below:

But I’m so excited I’m already setting up designs for 6 more, to make a set of 7 lenticular prints (7 seems to be the most fetishized number in the Book of Revelation). Because I want to look at them adjacent to each other, I’m posting them here!

HUGE VIDEO FILE AT ARCHIVE.ORG

Compressed hi-res MP4 at Vimeo

After 4 tedious days of rendering hundreds of high-resolution video files, only to discover they seemed to be missing one frame each and so weren’t looping properly, followed by a few days of unhappy procrastinating, followed by 3 additional tedious and crabby days of re-rendering, I finally have all the animation of ApocalypseAnimated.com in Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixel) uncompressed Apple ProRes video for your remixing pleasure. Roughly in order, each loop in this gigantic, 20GB file appears exactly once. They can be cut apart and ...

I made this little “trailer” video for ApocalypseAnimated.com . It’s only 3 minutes long, while there are almost 12 minutes of animation (without even looping!) in the project, so this is but a mere sample of the wonders to find at the website. But this has music so people are likelier to share and attend to it.

There are some technical looping flaws that bother me. Apparently when I export HD video from Moho, it omits the last frame of the loop, causing a jerk in the seams. This doesn’t happen when I export gifs. To make my ...

“It is done.” — Revelation 21:6

I’ve finished ApocalypseAnimated.com! All 22 chapters are now illustrated. I will undoubtedly continue to fuss with it, adding and revising things here and there, but this is basically it.

I’ve been working on it all day every day since October.

Next I work on an app for it, and generate high-res video of all the loops for other uses.

Hope you enjoy it! Please share it if you do.

The post It is Done appeared first on Nina Paley.

I’ve revived my temporarily-abandoned Apocalypse project, which now lives at apocalypseanimated.com. Instead of a movie, I’m illustrating the Book of Revelation with animated gif loops, in the tradition of Medieval and post-Medieval Apocalypses. Except instead of being hand-lettered and painted on parchment, it’s all digital. Still, the gif is the 21st Century’s equivalent of the woodcut, as I discussed 6 years ago:

…the advent of the printing press led to the explosion of a unique kind of illustration: the wood-cut. Since…the internet is in many ways analogous to the printing press, I saw a ...

The two-word request for this Hundred Dollar Drawing was “Little Beast,” but this is really Lil’ Beast o’ the Apocalypse.

This summer I was surprised by several out-of-the blue, generous gifts. One of them was from illustrator Nina Bunjevac, with whom I communicate occasionally on social media – we have a little Mutual Admiration Society going. She sent me a set of beautiful French tarot cards, which I received last week and promptly stared at for several hours.

Although we share a first name, I promise that doesn’t bias me. Bunjevac’s line art epitomizes what I’ve always thought line art should be. She’s a direct creative heir to one of my all-time favorite illustrators, Virgil Finlay, and ...

There are a lot of angels in the Book o’ Revelation, and I’ve been dithering about how to depict them. But they mostly seem like they can be represented like this, except for the one that has legs of fire (I’ll figure out what to do about him/her/it/them/zir later). Flying-hands-with-eyes should be able to handle most apocalyptic angel duties, such as hurling fiery censers, dumping bowls of plagues, blowing horns, and whatnot.

The post Angel o’ the Lord appeared first on Nina Paley.

I don’t want to have to animate a hand by hand. So I made this articulated “bone” model. Problem is, it’s a little stiff, and there’s no way to make the white outlines smooth and even. It seems like a nice smooth hand would be easy enough; the problem is when the fingers go in front of each other, as in the making of a fist. Then you need layers, where each part of a digit that obscures any other part is on another layer. This model has 16 layers: one for each “bone” of the fingers ...

⁴ The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication.  —Revelation 17

The post Cup o’ Abominations appeared first on Nina Paley.

This is definitely a work in progress.

The Whore wears scarlet, but I think the Beast she rides is also red, so I might take some liberties with color when I show them together.

² And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
….
⁴ And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
⁵ …. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
….
⁸ And I ...

I’m working on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Horse and the Man use the same 64-pointed shape as the Cathedral, Wing, Eye, Beast Head, Rose Window, etc. Because they’re the same object, I made this little 2-frame test in which they alternate – essentially a Thaumatrope. It’s just an experiment, but maybe I’ll use this effect for reals somewhere.