Making a Lino Cut Animation

In a year where I was feeling too down too frequently I thought knew picking up some craft projects could help. I went to my local art store and got some stuff for origami, minis, and to add to the fishtank project, but to try something new I also got some lino cut materials (linoleum blocks, a brayer for the ink, and some cutting/carving tools).

Christmas was coming up so I tried to make a christmas card for my family and it came out horrific, some of the progress pics can be seen here in the project gallery. The details weren't deep enough, the text was backwards, and i inked it awfully, but it was fun and my family appreciated the effort.

I still really liked the look of lino cuts and wanted to get better. My friend A was hosting a craft night at her place so I brought my materials over and looked through my head for things to make. Eventually I landed on making a cut of my cat French Fry, based off his beautiful image:

From there I sketched him out

and made a draft print

I liked the look of it alot, so I decided to keep going with it and make a little animation of him. I started out by stamping him a few more times directly onto the speed mat I was using:

As I carved out those frames, I made small changes to the eyes so that it could give him the look of blinking

Heres a couple of the frames side by side

The idea for the animation would just be Fry, relaxed by my bedroom window in my parents' house, watching birds go by lazilly, so the next step was to make a bird:

I thought I'd have fun with materials for the branch, so I took some balsa wood with the idea of making a wood stamp for the branch so that I can naturally get some wood texture

It looked pretty bad hahah. Instead I'd use a painted version of the branch because i liked the outline, but it would never again look as good as its initial sketch. Aint that the way it goes

I wanted to use a bunch of materials for the window itself. I thought with acrylic sheets I could do something like the old animation style of taking a picture of multiple stacked layers of glass (see: Multiplane Camera on Wikipedia)

I sketched the window:

tried out the branch against a watercolor sky

At this point my work area was looking wild

I tried out some more window drafts

I really didn't like the look, so I started trying out a bunch of alternatives

I thought everything was so dark, noisey, and hard to differentiate, so I tried putting one of my computer monitors on its back and using it as a backlight. This also let me test a bunch of different backgrounds quickly.

Ultimately I didn't like any of these but the effort was fun. What I took away was that I liked some of the individual elements: the cat and bird were the center, the curtains were adorable, the window + the printed bush and branch with color pencil coloring looked fun. I mainly thought the backgrounds were problematic, adding too much distraction from what i wanted to be the focus. I simplified it down:

With a simple background I thought I'd be able to greenscreen out the background, which would be good for one of the main project extensions I could think of which would be a music video of changing backgrounds and seasons with fry lazily watching them go by.

Next steps

The main next step I pictured was making a music video. I really liked mixed media MVs like these:

Andy Shauf - "The Magician"

Slow Pulp - Falling Apart

And to a lesser extent because of their digital art focus (but they're still fun so gonna add them)

Mac Miller - Good News

Charli XCX - claws

I haven't worked on making it a music video at all, but one day I might! Instead what this will likely be used for soon is a splash screen for video games I develop solo.