"16 letters" opens today on Gothtober

"16 letters," my newest animation, opens today, October 6th, on Gothtober. I'm really grateful to be included on the calendar again and be able to share my work this way.

This impish six-minute stop-motion animated piece plays with moveable letters that represent a partial selection of the alphabet, morphing a few letters at a time into a succession of words. Reflecting on the malleability and abstract power of language and thought, I expanded on the meaning of and my personal associations with each word using sound and images, with sometimes rather quirky results.

Letters ready to become words and 

ideas on my animation stage

Language starts as something finite, but becomes infinitely expansive. As a student of linguistics, I marvel at the gigantic potential that a small and finite number of language sounds (represented somewhat approximately by letters) has to represent an unlimited number of concepts as words.

Words, and language itself, are abstract entities and don't belong to anyone, but everyone who can talk holds them as a deeply and unconsciously integrated part of himself, effortlessly using them to think and communicate. Language is a part of us at the basic physical level, in the structures of our brains and vocal tracts, but it soars into our highest thoughts and most ineffable emotions and experiences. And though we all may know and use a particular word, the ideas, memories, and feelings we associate with it can be delightfully unique.

Please take a look at what I've done. I have a lot of fun on my own creating these pieces, but I also make them for you, the viewer. So do let me know what you think.

Go to www.gothtober.com and take a look at Julianna's creation for the main page this year: the Gothtober International Airport. Then click on the number 6, on the brown suitcase on top of the baggage cart, and take off on a six-minute flight with "16 letters."

Love and Groceries

Touching on the theme of charity 

with illustrated package labels

How do you successfully express the combined ideas of kindness – and groceries? That’s the challenge I faced recently on an assignment to design and illustrate a poster for a food bank donation project. 

A Food Donation Project

The poster would introduce the community at a local spiritual center to a new volunteer-run community service project, in which participants purchase a few packaged food items for charity each time they grocery shop. On collection days, participants deliver the items to the center in a provided bright green shopping bag, for drop off at a local food bank.

A Big Job for a Little Poster

This poster had a big job to do, as it would serve as the first and most-seen printed communication for a project with a limited budget. One modestly sized copy would be printed, which would be mounted and re-used indefinitely to advertise the project. An image of the required green bag had to be included, as well as simple instructions on how to participate, and a space to show the next collection date. Most importantly, the design needed to communicate to a culturally diverse community with a wide range of ages and backgrounds.

The finished design

Creating the Poster

I started by selecting a typeface that suggested the homey, old-fashioned type often used on food package designs, and selected green tones for the type that would echo the important “green bag.” To catch the eye and communicate instantly, I painted an illustration showing a bright and bold array of packaged foods in front of a simplified bag, using the smooth, solid colors of gouache.
To convey the spirit of brotherly love that motivates the project, and hopefully inspire viewers, I designed a love-themed label for each package, including several images of hearts, and invented brand names that expressed the theme of charity, such as a package of milk from  “Kindness Farms” and a box of cereal labeled “Fields of Sharing.” I felt that expressing the theme without using images of specific people was an elegant way to reach a diverse community. 

Encouraging Results

To date, the food donation project has collected 763 pounds of food – and that was just on its first collection day. While the project’s initial success is certainly due to the inherent dedication of the community and the project volunteers, these encouraging results also suggest that this little poster is communicating successfully.

Check out the project’s Facebook page 
Inspired to help? Find a local food bank (U.S.A. only)

The Little Mermaid

Have you ever  tried working with a 200-watt light bulb blazing at each side of your head? I’d say it’s somewhat like the sensation a consciousness-endowed eggplant would experience inside a solar oven on a July day in Arizona, about halfway to its final form as baba ghanoush. Try it sometime. Working between two 200-watt light bulbs, I mean, not the baba ghanoush. I’m sure that you, sophisticated reader, have already tried baba ghanoush.

I mention this unique sensation of being solar-baked because working alongside 200-watt light bulbs is a necessary part of making stop animation, which is the medium I’ve been exploring this year. The realm of the Brothers Quay, Martha Coburn, and Gumby and Poky, stop animation is the process of making physical objects appear to move by capturing them in sequential photographs.

Setting up a shot on my animation stage

In my new three-minute stop animation, “The Little Mermaid,” the physical objects are two-dimensional jointed puppets that tell the story of a solitary mermaid. This project is the result of about four months of work, and the mounting of a lot of steep learning curves, including figuring out how to set up a useable animation stage, getting some kind of grip on creating the desired animation speeds and motion, and getting accustomed to the subtleties of digital photography beyond the snapshot camera.

“The Little Mermaid” makes its Internet debut October 7^th on the great Gothtober.com. So, this Sunday, when you come back from your starry-eyed Sunday stroll or leisurely autumn picnic in the park (or harried soccer practice pickup, or desperate dash through the grocery store, arms full of deli-packed baba ghanoush, or whatever your Sunday looks like), I invite you to click on Gothtober pumpkin number 7 and meet the little mermaid.

Go to the second "Little Mermaid" entry

The Making of "The Buffalo Demon"

I've put many hours into the artwork, design, and animation for this piece, and an amazing group of people has also contributed their voices, time, and talent to it. I hope you'll enjoy it!

Art resources

After writing and mercilessly editing my script, I took a field trip to the San Francisco Asian Art Museum to work on the visual look of the piece.

Designing the look of Mahisa was fairly simple (you need an evil-looking buffalo? I can do that) but designing a character to represent Durga took more thought. I settled on a character based on sculptures of Durga and other goddesses that date from 900 to 1000 C.E. These sculptures have small waists, large hips, and extensive jewelry, and are clothed in a clinging garment around the hips. The Durga you’ll see in my piece has a body shape, clothing, and jewelry similar to these older Durgas, but she also has the long hair, large eyes, and frequently sweet expressions you’ll see in most popular, contemporary representations.

I studied a series of Rajput paintings (18^th century Indian paintings from Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan) to formulate the style for my own paintings, borrowing their flattened perspective, large expanses of light, flat colors as backgrounds, and eschewal of shadows in favor of outlines to define forms. Interestingly, when I combined these conventions with my personal drawing style, the resulting images actually reminded me of Warner Bros. cartoons as much as Indian paintings! Not the expected result, but I went with it.

I also drew on a visit I made several years ago to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where I spent an hour with a series of illustrations from the Ramayana. What interested me most about these was that they showed the same character several times in the same picture to illuminate different points in the narrative. I decided to use this same fluid approach to time in my images of the battle scenes in my piece.

The sound of awesome

One of the best parts of creating this piece was working with some super-talented friends.

Dia expertly recorded an amazing voice acting session for us, and everyone contributed a unique touch to the character voices. Lori was a fierce, powerful Durga, Jared gave a gorgeous, stentorian performance as Mahisa. Adrienne, Jenny, Dia, and Jared were hilarious and versatile as the various other demons, and Adrienne also made a brave and mighty lion.

Karla outdid herself creating music with GarageBand; her extensive searches for just the right instruments and samples, and her inspired combinations have paid off in an elegant soundtrack that seamlessly creates the right mood for each scene. Karla also tirelessly edited the voice recording sessions, compiling voice and music files ready to tweak and place in each scene.

I listened to the sound for this piece many, many times while animating the images, and I marveled each time at everyone’s brilliant sound work.

Painting, painting, and more painting

I spent a month creating 29 separate gouache paintings on paper, including separate background paintings, which I put together into the images for this piece. The battle scenes in particular are compiled from series of images that I planned and sketched together, then executed in pieces, scanned, and assembled in Photoshop. This piecemeal approach made it easy to create and store the paintings; if, for example, I had painted the battle between Durga and Mahisa on one continuous sheet, I would have needed a piece of paper that was six and half feet long.

Flashes of inspiration – and irritation

What can I say about Adobe Flash? This Web animation software has allowed me to create some Web artwork that I’m very proud of… on the other hand, it has sometimes taken me to the edge of sanity! This time was no exception. Happily, I survived the week of combining the sound and images and animating the transitions, and the artwork is ready to open tomorrow, Tuesday, October 25^th.

Click here for more about the story of the buffalo demon.

Watch It!

If you haven’t seen Gothtober, the world’s only Halloween countdown Web art calendar, yet, do take a look at some of the other pieces on it… as always, it’s a grab-bag of Web art pieces that range from funny and cute, to gross and scary, to amusingly odd, and are sometimes all three at once.

By the way, as you can probably tell, I did not create The Buffalo Demon with a child audience in mind, so please watch it yourself before deciding whether to share it with a kid.

You will find my piece at the following link; on the Gothtober page, click on the square that says “25.” http://www.gothtober.com/index.html

The Buffalo Demon

It’s October again and I have another piece of art on Gothtober.com. This year’s piece tells an ancient Hindu story in which a demon in the form of a buffalo (yes, that’s right, an evil demon that looks like a bovine with big horns) takes over the world with his army of demons, and has to be taken down.

About the Story

My main resource for the story information was the Devimahatmya, an anonymous text written about fifteen centuries ago in northwest India. The story of the buffalo demon is one of three narratives within this text, and depicts an epic battle on a grand scale. While I chose to reduce the number of characters and scenes for necessary brevity, I have otherwise tried to follow the text fairly closely in my retelling. However, I’m sure I have made mistakes in the way I’ve represented some elements, so if you know Indian culture or this story better than I do, please forgive them.

What’s all the fighting for?

A fierce battle is not a typical subject for me, and, while seated at my drafting table, painting various decapitations and impalements, I did occasionally ask myself why there is so much violence in this story. Although the stories of the Devimahatmya were written down during India’s Classical Age, a time of peace and advancement, they doubtless existed before this as oral traditions, and they reflect the experience of ancient people for whom mortal danger and hand-to-hand combat to the death must have been everyday realities.

As far as I know, the Western view of beings like demons sees them as decidedly evil, and the idea of their redemption is usually not considered. However, in a worldview where all souls are re-born countless times until they reach an ultimate liberation, even demons have a chance at eventual enlightenment. The Devimahatmya’s buffalo demon sequence ends with a long hymn of praise sung by the gods for the conquering goddess Durga, during which they extol her compassion.

…Though they may have committed enough evil to keep them long in torment, even as you strike down our enemies… you think, May they reach heaven through death in battle with me.

Why does your mere glance not reduce all [demons] to ashes? Because when assailed by your weapons and thus purified, even those adversaries may attain the higher worlds. Even toward them your intentions are most gracious. (1)

I find this idea of a transcendent, purifying death in battle sort of chillingly beautiful; it’s inspiring that the demons actually benefit from being killed by Durga, but it still sounds really freaky.

Higher meaning

Like any classic that has withstood the test of time, you can interpret the story of the buffalo demon through several different lenses, such as the ongoing struggle between good and evil in the world, or as a reflection of the individual’s internal battle between the selfish ego and the higher impulses that tame it. There is also something intriguing in the character of Mahisa, the buffalo demon, in that he is not quite what he appears to be (what is his true form, really?). However, even after researching details and contemplating the meaning of this tale for the better part of a year, I still feel like the story is operating at a higher level that I can’t quite pin down.

Click here for more about how I created this piece.

Watch It!

If you haven’t seen Gothtober, the world’s only Halloween countdown Web art calendar, yet, do take a look at some of the other pieces on it… as always, it’s a grab-bag of Web art pieces that range from funny and cute, to gross and scary, to amusingly odd, and are sometimes all three at once.

By the way, as you can probably tell, I did not create The Buffalo Demon with a child audience in mind, so please watch it yourself before deciding whether to share it with a kid.

You will find my piece at the following link; on the Gothtober page, click on the square that says “25.” http://www.gothtober.com/index.html

(1) Devadatta Kali, translator and commentator, In Praise of the Goddess: The Devimahatmya and Its Meaning (Maine: Nicholas-Hays, Inc., 2003), p. 84

Little Monsters!

I was lurching my way downtown on Muni this September, casting around

frantically

for ideas for this year’s Gothtober piece, when I noticed a little kid sitting next to her grandmother nearby. I idly thought, “What a cute little kid… it would be really fun if she was wearing a monster costume.” Then it occurred to me: why just a costume? What if that little kid was a baby monster? Monsters are sort of scary by definition, but almost anything “baby” is cute. I bet even baby sharks are cute.

With these thoughts as my beginning (except for the part about sharks… there are no baby sharks in my piece, that was just a parenthetical conjecture), I put together a portfolio of little monster cartoons, all set during a day at monster pre-school. I'm certainly not the only person to come up with juvenile creepy characters. Charles Addams did that before I was even born. But it was still fun to come up with my own baby versions of various types of monsters and scary beings.

Cartoons tend to look spontaneous, but the images you’ll see tomorrow are really the result of a thought-out process that includes brainstorming, narrowing down ideas, sketching, creating an ordered illustration plan, drawing model sheets and thumbnail sketches of scenes, and careful pencil and ink work on the final illustrations. Not to mention the joys of Flash programming.

Since my movie piece for Gothtober last year, I have continued to make friends with working in black and white. (You can see my piece from 2009 at http://www.gothtober.com/ARCHIVE/2009/index.html. Click on day 21.) This year’s drawings are inked brushwork on Bristol paper, except for the images in the introduction and credits, which are marker drawings from my model sheets. I had been drawing strictly with ink pens – the old-fashioned kind with calligraphy nibs -- until this summer, when I took a drawing class with artist Alexis Amann at the San Francisco Art Institute. Alexis convinced me to try drawing with a brush, and I’m glad she did.

This entry wouldn’t be complete without a huge (huge!) thank you to Julianna Parr and all the staff of Gothtober.com for Gothtober, and for giving me the chance to share this art. The Gothtober site and all the artwork on it are so much fun… October wouldn’t be the same without it.

My “Little Monsters” piece opens tomorrow, October 13, 2010. You can see it at http://www.gothtober.com/index.html. Just click on the twirling purple knob numbered 13.

BLACK FINGERS!

I’ve been working for the last six weeks on a Web-based art piece for the Halloween countdown calendar Gothtober.com. The calendar releases a new art piece by a different artist for every day of October, and mine will open tomorrow, October 21. I’m very grateful to the creator of Gothtober, Julianna Parr, and to all the Gothtober staff, for giving me an invaluable opportunity to experiment and push my work to a new level, and to share it with a wider audience.

My piece, titled “Black Waters,” tells a touching -- yet creepy! -- story of a monster’s love for a beautiful blonde backpacker. In this piece, I’ve used still and animated charcoal drawings along with voice acting and sound effects to create a sort of hybrid of graphic novel and movie.

I created this piece to go with Gothtober’s theme for 2009, “Drive-In Movie.” I took inspiration from the basic idea and monster image for the 1954 film, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon,” to come up with my own aquatic monster story. “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” is such a part of American movie culture that although I’d never actually seen the film, I’ve always been amused by the image of the monster and the general idea of the story.

In fact, I had already written the first draft of the script for my own piece before I watched the original “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” film for the first time. I was surprised by how similar some elements in my story were to the original storyline and film. In particular, I was intrigued to find that while I had spontaneously decided to set my story in a Florida lagoon that (naturally!) adjoins a cave, in the original “Creature” film, which is set in Brazil, the underwater sequences were actually filmed on location in Florida (!) in a lagoon that leads to, guess what: one of the largest underwater caves in the United States.

The piece incorporates over twenty-five individual charcoal drawings, so designing and executing these illustrations was a large part of this project. On a good day, I would produce five or six drawings, and had the charcoal-coated fingers to prove it. There were some moments when, while deciding whether to use a 2B Conte crayon or a 6B charcoal pencil for a certain shadow, I felt like I was back in art school, stroking and blending my way through a figure drawing – except that I didn’t have a nude monster posing on a platform in front of me. By the way, some of my favorite drawings from this piece are the ones featuring armadillos... I had to do a bit of research in order to depict them properly, and I discovered that armadillos are quite cute!

Working with actors (recruited from among my friends) and sound has been a delightful part of this project, and I’m truly grateful for how generous Dia, Bobby, and Canyon were with their time and creativity. I gave them free rein to portray the characters however they wanted and I was really tickled by the results. It’s just incredibly fun to hear how each person plays his or her part, and to combine the sounds to create the illusion of events unfolding. I only wish I had a photo of Dia and me in front of the mic, Dia screaming and lowering her face into a bowl of water while I grabbed her leg, pretending to be the creature... ah, the things one does for art! In fact, I'm especially grateful to Dia, not only for playing the part of "Marissa," but also for recording me and putting the perfect effects on my voice to create the voice of the creature.

Please take a look at the piece, and let me know what you think. I’m really pleased and excited to share it with you. And don’t worry – the piece opens October 21, but you can go back and view it again later too.

To view it, go to www.gothtober.com and click on the square that says “21” (that’s 21, not 31).

Snacks... rabbits... what more could you want?

I created this pattern for the back of my business card.

Marriage Equality T-shirt on Cafe Press

These are a couple of snapshots from my Marriage Equality t-shirt. I designed it for all those who believe it's a basic human right to legally marry the person you love and want to build a life with. 

The shirts come in unisex and women's styles, and there's a blue and white version of the design (no color fills) for the more understated wearer. 

Shirts are available now on Cafe Press. Click here to go to my shop:

http://www.cafepress.com/Elsi_Tervo