Waves and Locomotion

Most natural movements – runs, walks, gallops – follow wave patterns. But it’s very difficult for me to analyze such movements so I can recreate them in animation.

For this experiment I worked backwards, first creating the simple wave movements (above) and then combining them into a gallop (below).

The legs are swinging back and forth as well as waving.

I struggle to animate even a simple wave; it does not come intuitively to me. I found a way to remember with the letters C-Z-D-S. The curves of those letters resemble the 4 keyframes of a wave loop. If I can remember those 4 keyframes, I can tween from one to another by hand or in this case using Flash’s shape tweening.
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Davis Vertical Feed restoration

 

I got this Davis Vertical Feed 2 on eBay for $30 (plus shipping). It arrived full of gunk and rust, barely moving, and smelling of smoke.

 

Getting a bath in the Parts Washer
Submerged in kerosene overnight
Soaked in kerosene and wiped but still full of gunk.
After cleaning what we could with kerosene and brass brushes, we soaked everything the following night in Evapo-Rust.
This morning we retrieved each piece, wiped it off, rinsed in water, wiped, rinsed in acetone, wiped, and revaled beautiful clean shiny parts.
Then we put everything back together, with liberal squirts of sewing machine oil.
Success! Here she is installed in my Minnesota A cabinet. She works great.
Here's the reason I bought and spent 3 days restoring her: the walking foot. I need this "vertical feed" system to sew bindings on quilts. The Minnesota A made too many random pleats and crumples.
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Blogger’s Quilt Festival – “Ziz” quiltimation in Art Quilts

Approximately 32″ square. Cotton fabric, cotton/bamboo batting, rayon thread. Machine embroidery, quilting, trapplique.

I’m submitting this in Art Quilts because there’s no “animation” category in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival. 😉 I’m happy to have it in an online show, because you can easily see it animated:

Ziz quiltimation - animated quiltEach block of the quilt is a frame in the animated cycle above. I created the animation, exported as vector images which Theo Gray stitchcoded in Mathematica. Each block was stitched in 2 parts on our embroidery machine: first the Ziz (gryphon) figure, then the background. I cut out and applied the former to the latter and the machine “trappliqued” it down and did the echo pattern. Finally I zigzag stitched the blocks together, topstitched homemade bias tape over the seams, and bound it.

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Alumnuts

University High School 1984

Super high-res (800 dpi) image at archive.org!

I recently dug up, scanned and restored this cartoon I drew in 1984 for the Uni High yearbook. It makes me nostalgic not for school (for which I still carry much resentment*) but for the glorious escape drawing provided those years. There were no art classes at Uni while I was there, for which I am eternally grateful. While my liberal friends are mostly “arts education” boosters, I owe my survival to Art staying beyond the reach of school, teachers, and institutionalization. School ruined math, literature, physical exercise, social interactions, and pretty much everything else that could be beautiful – thank doG it didn’t ruin drawing too.

 

*Dropping out of the University of Illinois at the end of my Sophomore year was the first Great Decision I ever made. My second Great Decision was freeing Sita Sings the Blues and dropping out of Copyright. I’ve only made two Great Decisions in my life, but they’re plenty. Dayenu.

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