Harva-Contest Mania

First, a big big big huge thank you to anyone who voted for Harv's Packers/Penske commercial. You are awesomer than awesome. Sadly, he didn't win. A big bummer. If you ask me, it was a very poorly run contest, with little to no promotion and a three month window in which you could vote. It seems fairly certain that the prize went to not the best spot but to the person who could get the most friends to vote everyday. Harv's pretty modest and not the type to shamelessly self-promote to the extent that was probably necessary to win.
Oh well. He's already got big plans for next year.
One contest does not a mania make and so I will now share with you what prevented me from making a single handmade gift this year.


The Bushman World Ukulele Video Contest!
I found out about this contest about three weeks before I had to leave town for Christmas, decided to enter 2 weeks before and only started animating 1 week before. Yipes. It was tight. But I designed the video in a way so that I could probably (I hoped) get it done. It's all cutout paper and fabric shot on a down shooter (a multiplaned table with the camera suspended above). I started animating on a Saturday, finished the following Friday night (while working full time, bear in mind), took a red-eye to Connecticut the next night and finished all of the compositing/editing (computer stuff) once we were there. It was nuts.
Of course I had some super helpers all along the way. Buddy Systems (Harv's studio) was very awesome to let me shoot there and use their resources. Linnea and Kelsey, two Buddy interns, helped a ton. Among other things, Linnea drew the puppet and Kelsey cut out all of the hills and trees. Jenny Towner did the track reading and lip synch, Eric Towner advised me on post production matters and Harv did all of the lighting and camera work. Nick Mariana sacrificed some of his band's rehearsal time to help me record the song and Alex Kamer lent his baritone uke skills to the mix. Ethan Marak saved my deadline with some last minute advice. Plus, he gave me "permission to not be amazing". And last but not least, Tennessee Reid Norton got me hooked on the ukulele two months ago and I've been obsessed ever since.
Thank you all so much, you're all the best best best!

So, wish me luck! Thankfully, this contest is not determined by internet voting. The winners are announced on Monday.
Here's a handful of behind the scenes pictures.

Make a young boy's dreams come true!

Okay, not so young but you can help him just the same! My husband Harv is a finalist in a commercial contest for Penske Trucks and the Green Bay Packers. The winner gets to watch the last home game of the year from a box suite with 17 of their favorite Packer fans. Now, I should mention that at least 40% of Harv's brain is devoted to the Packers at any given time, much more so the closer it is to Sunday. With this contest going on, it's probably up to more like 80 or 85.

So if you're ever in the mood for some cute stop-motion, hop on over and cast your vote. The voting lasts for a loooooo-oooonnnnnggg time and you can vote everyday so don't be shy!
The contest is here, Harv is commercial number 5. Thanks for listening, you all are the sweetest!

The End

Well, the show that I have been working on, "Moral Orel", has been canceled. We found out a while ago but were able to finish the last season, slightly shortened. I've said it before but it's worth repeating here that "Moral Orel" is a wonderful show, unlike any animated show on tv now or in the past. If you haven't seen it (which I'm pretty sure you haven't) please check it out. The first 15 episodes are on DVD, all episodes that have aired are available on iTunes and the third an final season will be airing sometime soon on Cartoon Network.
I wanted to make a thank you gift for our animation director, my friend Ethan who you may remember as the recipient of Pac-y. You may also remember that Ethan returned Pac-y about a month after receiving him. Pac-y was too big and Ethan claims he was growing. So as a way of saying "job well done" I tried again with a smaller machine, this one featuring an as-of-yet undeveloped game called "Ethan!".
The "Ethan!" game play consists of doing all of the things that Ethan does best, some of which you can see here on the title screen. I designed the graphic and printed it out on pre-treated inkjet fabric.
This machine is a much more manageable size than Pac-y, perfect for sitting on a shelf or the corner of a desk. (Seen here with the recipient for scale.)
The joystick is made of pipe cleaner bent at a right angle and sewed to the inside of the machine with a painted wooden ball glued to the end.
"Ethan!" doesn't have the great big coin "tunnel" with a zipper in the back like Pac-y did. Instead he has a petite little pocket on the front with a buttonhole.
Space for a couple of quarters, maybe not your whole stash for your next visit to the arcade but enough to make a phone call! If you're into that sort of thing.

What?

Wait, what's today's date? It is? Huh. Well I guess I blew that one. So my New Years posting mojo kind of petered on me. Don't worry, you won't get gypped out of my 2007 round up. Let's just tie up a couple of loose ends here.
First, a cart. It's from Ikea and I decoupaged pieces of wrapping paper from the Paper Source onto the drawer fronts, top and sides before assembling it.

I was planning on bringing this to work to keep my crap in and wheel from stage to stage but in the end I decided that the decoupage was a little too delicate for studio life. Instead it's staying home and holding different crap in my craft room.
As you can see, Stabone really digs it.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is my very last craft of 2007.

It is a baby quilt for the little boy that a friend from high school will be having this year. She had a shower on December 30 so I chose a project that I could complete after my Christmas gifts were done but could be finished before the shower with mostly hand work since we would be in Minnesota for the entire time with limited access to a sewing machine.

The idea to hand quilt around large motifs in the fabric came from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts. The quilt in the book is very girly with large flowers. I had a hard time finding a fabric that would be suitable for a boy but still cool and not too cutesy. I don't like cutesy. I bought all three fabrics(front, back and binding) from Sew Mama Sew. You can find them here.

So, sorry for the long lag in updating, we've been very busy with work. Season 3 of Moral Orel is going to be incredible. People, this is a great show. You probably don't watch it but you should. The first 15 episodes are available on DVD and I know you have Netflix so you have no excuse. You can also see clips and some full episodes at the Adult Swim website but it's really best watched in sequential order so get to work on that DVD now so you can be ready when season 3 airs! AND! I just check iTunes and all of the episodes are there but not in the right order. There's an episode guide here if you're actually interested.
And if you want to see some more stop-motion goodness, Harv produced some animation for a Soulja Boy video recently. I laid low for much of the production (I was making Christmas gifts) but I did make the costumes for the puppets. I'm pretty clueless about what's happening in the rap world (I assume that you're hip to it though, right?) but apparently Soulja Boy is quite popular with the kids these days. So check that out too. I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure you people don't have nearly enough stop-motion in your lives. It is by far the craftiest type of film making, in my opinion.

Long Time No Blog

There's no good reason for my recent lapse in posting so let's just pick up where we left off, ay?
At long long long long last I have finished this beast.

A Denyse Schmidt inspired queen sized quilt for my sister Lauren's birthday. Her birthday, in case you were wondering, is June 6. Guess what tomorrow is! It's her half-birthday! Yes, this gift is 6 months late. But it's such a special gift, surely that's okay!

So what took me so long? I don't know. It's not like there was anything particularly difficult about this. I think I just reached several plateaus of motivation and had a hard time working my way past them. But it is done.

Hey, here's something cool: because Lauren lives in Connecticut where a thin quilt doesn't cut it in the winter I turned this quilt into a duvet so she can use it year round. I quilted together the quilt top, batting and a queen sized sheet from Ikea. Then I bound that together with the actual quilt back, leaving a three foot opening at the bottom to stuff a comforter into. It's convertible! Clever, aye?

Of course you can't put a new quilt out anywhere without this happening:

If the quilt weren't going to my sister I wouldn't let the cats love all over it. But where this baby's going there will certainly be much more of the like.

PS Check me out: I've been nominated for a major award! I'm very excited and there's no mirror in here but I think I'm blushing as I write this. The ceremony isn't until February and in the meantime I must find something fabulous to wear. Wish me luck!

Something Different

There hasn't been any sewing going on around here in the past few days. I've been working on a maquette for a stop-motion series that Harv is developing.
I'm hoping to finish sculpting and cast it this weekend so I can paint it this week before we head out to Wisconsin for this year's Harvatine Rendezvous.

In the spirit of this post, why don't you go check out some of the shorts that Harv has been working on. This is what he does while I sew. Look here here and here. And if you really feel like watching more stop-motion, I just found some of the stuff I animated on the Robot Chicken Star Wars special. Unlike Harv, I only do this stuff at work.