Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.
I didn’t think this one out beforehand, but as I was staring at the animated gif of the Roman soldiers and the one of Judah “The Hammer” Maccabee, I thought, “what if I put these together?” This might make a violent and tasteless Channukah e-card for next year. Meanwhile, I have to animate more violence: the Romans have to smite the Hebrews, the Byzantines the Romans, then some Caliphates, Crusaders and Malmuks have to kill each other. Swords, sabres, battle axes, and maybe spears, I guess.
Judah Maccabee will ultimately prove no match for these guys. They happen to look exactly like some Macedonians I used earlier in the scene, but I gave up designing more costumes.
Judah Maccabee was the original “Hebrew Hammer.” Although the Maccabees figure into the story of Channukah, not Passover, they are included in the Brief History of Israel scene I’m working on.
Here’s our pal the Angel of Death, hero of the Old Testament, doing what He does best in a scene I’m working on.
It’s been slow going working on Seder-Masocochism. In fact I’ve hardly worked on it at all. Instead I’ve been shuttling between New York and Urbana, IL, attending Ebertfest, hanging out with my Momz, and dating this guy. This “human relationships” stuff takes time, time I could be sitting in a lonely garret with nothing to do but animate. But don’t worry, Urbana will eventually become as boring as I remember it growing up, and I’ll turn inward for solace once again.
Did I mention I plan to spend this Summer in Urbana? It’s just as hot and humid as New York, but the garbage cans are spaced more widely apart and there are fewer tourists. Plus I will have access to a swimming hole out in the prairie. After 8 consecutive Summers in densely-packed New York, that alone is reason for me to spend the hottest months away this year.
This outstanding use of animation and design to illustrate otherwise difficult or dry concepts is by Dermot O’Connor.
Guess what I found at my parents’ house in Urbana? A VHS tape called “NINA PALEY DEMO REEL 1998.” It contained my very first animation as an adult (my very very first was when I was about 13, but I’ve lost those Super-8 reels). I didn’t go to school, I just taught myself from books and asking friends. It helped that I was dating an animator; he owned an animation table, which I’d never seen before let alone used, and it was on that that I made this:
Straight out of Nina’s Adventures, right? Audio is from Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.”
The first stop-motion clay animation I made, Luv Is…, is Not Safe For Work and is embarrassingly neurotic, but the same characters appear in this, my second stop-motion clay animation:
I Heart My Cat was shot on a 16mm Krasnogorsk camera with a light leak, and you can see the adorable Desi at the very end. Nik Phelps made the fantastic score, one of my favorite scores ever.
For “Cancer” I drew, scratched and painted this directly on an old 35mm porn film. My boyfriend-at-the-time’s sister had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Music is the Del Rubio Triplets singing the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”
These all have copyright notices on them, because I believed in copyright back then. But I hereby release them, consider them CC-BY-SA but better still ignore all licenses no matter what they are and do whatever you want. Thanks to Ken Levis for digitizing the VHS tape. You kids today should be grateful you have all these digital formats instead of VHS! It was awful to work with, and as you can see the quality was crap too. Hooray for technological progress! Power to the people!