Tuesday, June 26, 2007

a counting piece I did for Sesame Street

Aside from awesomely talented and mysterious Linda Davick, my biggest fans are the Sesame Street twenty somethings, who asked me if I'd done this piece.

You can't imagine how devoted to Sesame Street they are. There are forums where they talk about it. (think about it...)

I liked the design at the time, but not the music and voiceovers, so I never saved a copy. When I saw this youtube piece I was amazed by how bad the reproduction looks, and how image quality doesn't seem to matter to the youtube crowd, who are amazed that I am one of them... Dinah never was-- she never liked to watch tv when she was little.

I animated this as Color-Ade cutouts. Color-Ade was the coolest paper, silkscreened with an intensity of color that made it a sensual treat to work with. I looked in the closet for the storyboard today, but I'd tossed it. It would have been fun to contrast the intense colors of the design with the post laundry look of the youtube.

4 comments:

Sally said...

I love this! And I loved Color Ade paper; I used to make paper cutout cartoons. Maybe I can find one to post from the attic.

Anonymous said...

I cannot believe you didn't save a copy of this. Can you start over and make it go to 100 (at least)? Did you shoot the shapes, or did somebody else do that part?

My favorite characters are 4, 8, 9, 14, and 17. I like 16 too. And 18.

Will you open your closet and take a photo for us?

Sally said...

I just don't remember this one very well. It didn't have lyrics or a song to start with, so I was less engaged. Plus all the rubber cement- pwew.

Wonder if you guys ever experienced Exeter black paper? It was this camera perfect total gloss black paper used in animation, with punch holes. It was absolute black and shiny.

Shalom said...

Exeter paper has another use that's unrelated to animation: it's about the only aftermarket product that's usable for making backing paper for custom-cut roll films, such as the 616 or 122 sizes, which are no longer available from Kodak.