tao sledder

I got permission from the dance company, MACHiNENOiSY, to talk about the show I'm doing and show as much as a like, "As long as I don't say the show blows", which it doesn't. It's a fucking good time.

I'll probably be showing a lot of stuff from it in the next month, cuz I have a lot of animation to do for it, and it's going to occupy a lot of my creative time (although I'll still draw every day to keep my own vibe flowing deep underneath.) I still don't want to give too much away, though, so I'm mostly going to show rough works-in-progress n' shit like that.

The show is called Plaything, and it opens at the Scotiabank Dance Centre in Vancouver on June 18th.

I'm in high-gear animation mode - that familiar cramming feeling where I have 40 hours of work to do, and 30 hours to do it in. I have an unwholesome buttload of work to do before I head back into town on Monday. I enjoy the pace - it forces me to solve creative problems quickly, not to linger too long on decisions - trust first instincts and move on.

The beauty of this kind of work is that the animation is only one part of the whole. I'm not animating an entire scene. For instance, in the scene I've shown above, there will be a dancer and a puppeteer in there as well. (The right image has a stand-in for the dancer). It requires a different mindset than regular animation. This totally fucked with my head on the first performance I worked on, but now I love it.

I love this scene because I'm working directly with children's drawings. I think children's drawings are some of the most amazing illustrations out there - before I even started this project, I've had children's scribble-gifts to me pinned all over my studio wall. I love that kids' drawings are so random and spontaneous and joyful. Just like children are, I guess. Most of the time.

So for this scene, I'm trying to be just as spontaneous and joyful and random. Something I want to do in my life and art anyways, so there you have it.