Working on new tessellating animated gif tiles led me to revisit my older tile experiments, and repurpose for website backgrounds. I originally made these animated mosaics in Macromedia Flash 8 for my section of the feature film The Prophet.

I tried recreating the mosaics in Moho, but quickly became frustrated. Moho’s masking is very unlike Flash’s; in fact Moho’s everything is very unlike Flash’s, and where Flash excels at this type of mechanical construction, Moho favors the organic. Rather than figuring it out anew, I fired up the ol’ 2007 PowerMac and dug into my old Flash files. I exported as Quicktime Video with an alpha channel and copied to my less-ancient 2014 Mac Pro. Moho couldn’t read the old Quicktime format, so I exported again as Apple ProRes 4444, dropped it into Moho Pro, fiddled about with sizing, and eventually exported this transparent gif that will permit cartesian tiling even though the underlying shapes are hexagonal.

In the process I discovered this cool website that will generate a “sprite sheet” from your uploaded gif. This would have been convenient back when I was designing morphing tile fabric patterns, but back in those days – the days Flash still worked – I had to do it manually.

Speaking of Flash, Adobe just announced it’s dead forever. Wouldn’t it be nice if they released Macromedia Flash (you know, the GOOD version from before they bought and ruined it) so others could develop it?

October 14 event with Zsuzsanna Budapest

I’ll be returning to my old stomping grounds of Santa Cruz, CA in October (actually part of a longer North American film festival tour with Seder-Masochism, which I’ll announce soon).

The Goddess Animated: Nina Paley and Zsuzsanna Budapest

Double feature of Nina Paley animation! Each screening followed by dialog with Zsuzsanna Budapest and question-and-answer with audience.

1pm: Sita Sings the Blues
2009 Dir. Nina Paley
Paley’s award-winning 2009 animated musical interpretation of the Hindu epic Ramayana has earned widespread critical praise, a 100% rating on RottenTomatoes, and continued places on best-of lists. Roger Ebert wrote of it, “I am enchanted. I am swept away. I am smiling from one end of the film to the other.”

4pm: Seder-Masochism
2018 Dir. Nina Paley
Loosely following a traditional Passover Seder, events from the Book of Exodus are retold by Moses, Aharon, the Angel of Death, Jesus, and the director’s own father. But there’s another side to this story: that of the Goddess, humankind’s original deity. Seder-Masochism resurrects the Great Mother in a tragic struggle against the forces of Patriarchy.

Suggested donation: $20 to support the Women’s Spirituality Forum.
Tickets at the door.

AMAZONS ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND!