Boomboxes and Twiddlebugs (AKA: Lets Catch Up!)

Hey guys! Well, first up, thanks so much for the love on my last post. It's nice to know you guys still understand me-- or at least try to understand, lol. I know sometimes my points get lost in the blather, but I know a lot of you speak my language by now. ;)  So, for this post, let's sit back, chillax (that was for you, Erica!) and start to catch up a little!

Okay, well, it's been a good long while, so I'll do my best to get you up to speed on what I've been up to the last six months or so! (This may actually turn into a couple of posts, depending on how long it goes on, lol-- we'll see.)
Btw, this starts with a lot of text, but there are lots of pictures too. :)

So, lets recap. I closed the Smidge House shop at the end of May for a few reasons. I'll go deeper into some of that later, when I talk about... well, I'll get to that later. ;) The main reason was, I was starting a massive project that was going to take all of my time, and I knew the shop would go ignored for probably a few month. I'd put so much effort into creating it, and then to not be able to spend any time making new stuff, updating it or promoting it, well, it seemed like a bad way to go. So, rather than just let it go ignored, I closed the doors.

It turned out to definitely be the right decision, because the next 4 months or so, I barely left the house, I was so busy! (My boyfriend did most of the grocery shopping and cooking-- we ate a lot of cereal.) So, I definitely couldn't have done anything with the shop. It was a crazy weird time, and a lot to adjust to. Getting organized on a big level was a definite learning experience, but totally priceless, because it's 100% changed the way I do things. Not saying I'm stress free, (who is?) but my chicken with their head cut off days appear to be gone. Not having the shop or blog to keep up with anymore was definitely a switch! Although it was absolutely a necessity, while I focused on switching gears, and moving full steam ahead into a new career.

I basically spent the summer in a fog of awesome, building tons of cool stuff, figuring out some new techniques, being totally challenged. The extremely frustrating part (as I may have mentioned 30 times or so)  is that I can't show you, or tell you anything about it. While it's a totally acceptable tradeoff, considering, it's enough to make you a little loony, when you're used to sharing what you do. It was hard enough keeping the Brick Novax stuff a secret, lol. But, things need to stay under wraps for all sorts of reasons, so it's cool.

One note I can add, is that it took close to a year for Brick Novax to air/screen for the public, from the time I started working on it, to the Sundance premiere. (Obviously, they were working on it for a while before I came on board.) Brick Novax was basically a no motion production. When you film actual stop motion stuff, you usual average filming about 15-30 seconds a week. Nope, that's not a typo. Seconds. A week. Obviously, it depends on how many characters you're animating & how many people you have on staff, so independent productions with a small crew... well, you can imagine. It can take years to complete a stop motion film, and months for even the shortest ones. So, sometimes I'll be able to share stuff, and often... not. At least not for a while. But, it is what it is, and it's just part of the job.

But, every job is different, and in the fall I started working on a new stop motion project, and this one I have a few sneak peeks to show.  (Sorry, if you follow me on flickr, you've probably seen these, but I'll see if I can find something I haven't posted yet.) This set is a sort of crappy, rundown studio apartment, for an aspiring screenwriter, slacker, bachelor dude.

With such a specific character in mind, it was easy to think back to all the slacker/bachelors I've known, and their horrible apartments. They all had some similar "decor" for me to draw from. First of all, every dude needs a place to eat. And if it can double as a desk, all the better. And if it's under 20 bucks... well, it's perfect! So, card table it was! Some of you might remember that my sweetie gave me a folding table as a gift last year so I used that as a model, and ended up with this:

Yep, it's a folding table! Before someone asks, no, it actually doesn't fold, since there's no need for it to-- it's always going to remain upright. I took this pic at my new (like 6 months ago new, lol) mini workstation, which I'll post pics of one of these days. It's kinda cool.

Here's a comparison photo, for anyone who doesn't know what a human scale folding table looks like. ;) And because, I just like comparison pictures.

And, of course, every dude needs a little storage, to hold books and a tv and video games, and all that kinda jazz. And, so, I built this guy, a metal, utility style shelf you can pick up at any hardware store. It's kinda one of my favorite things, and I'll probably make again, lol, because I need one (or many)!

If you've ever had one of these, you know the shelves are adjustable to suit your storage needs, and this one has a big shelf for a television. When my sweetie and I got our own place together in college, it was a studio (a really big studio, with an awesome layout, and loads of storage space, that definitely rivals our current one bedroom-- you know, except for the having a bedroom part, lol.) and we had one of these shelves. It's where we kept our bigass stereo. Remember when people had stereos, lol? Ours looked like this:

Yep, it did have a tape player, that we even occasionally used, because we were both super old school and brought tapes with us to college, even though it was the ipod age by then,  lol!

Man, am I weird to be nostalgic over this ugly piece of plastic? Wow. I totally just remembered that I used to have one of these babies in high school that had like the 4 inch black and white tv in it. Anyone else have one of those? Lol, I have to say, I still think that's pretty cool.

Yep, there she is! How futuristic is that!? I used to lay in bed and watch David Letterman on that thing. Well, not so much "watch" as squint and listen, but it was still awesome! And, yes, it had 2, count em, 2 tape decks. That's so you could make mix tapes from your existing tapes. Man, I used to stay up nights in jr. high with my finger on the record button, taping songs off the radio, lol. *sigh* Good times.

Aaaaanyhoo. Went off the rails a bit, didn't I? Well, what else is new, lol. I was talking about the utility shelf. Here's the requisite comparison shot:

Not bad, right? Yup, definitely need some more of these. :)

Naturally, it needed to be filled up, with the appropriate books:

They don't really open, they're just props, but they do have true full color fronts, backs, and spines, and look pretty good regardless. It's a pretty tedious scanning and resizing these things, I'll tell ya! But, having tiny books that look exactly like your real books, lol, well, it's rad.

I got this book for my birthday this year. I'll let the Twiddlebugs borrow the tiny copy. ;) Remember the episode where they tried to hang the postage stamp?

Oh, those Twiddlebugs!

Okay, what else. Oh! Duh. The pullout sofa. Our studio was big enough so that we could fit a sofa and a bed, but most aren't. This set needed a pullout sofa.  I've known some dudes who just kept the pullout open all the time, and used that as a sofa, which is pretty skeevy, but hey, whatever. It's your house, I guess you can do what you want. Anyway, here it is as a sofa. 

 (You might recognize this fabric, I've used it before, but it was totally appropriate for this sofa. I was looking for something that could look old, used, hand me downish.) The set is in the early stages in this photo-- the windows are only half done, and the stuff is just thrown around to give you the idea. Instead of leaving the walls smooth, I spackled the crap out of them, really poorly, and used multiple layers off white, dirty looking paint, framing out spots where old tenants had their stuff hanging. Basically, high renter turnover + super low quality maintenance. 

So, that's where bachelor dude sits with his laptop, or to watch tv, or whatevs. The, night falls, and, ta-da:

Now it's a bed! (Btw, I never usually take pics with the flash on, but I just really liked the way it looked with these photos.) It's made of two modular pieces, so the sofa cushions can be removed, and the pullout frame/mattress can be attached. It doesn't actually fold, since that's not required. Here's Blaine testing it out:

Wow, does that look comfortable. You can see the sofa cushions off to the side there. Also, just ignore the whole his pants are unbuttoned thing, lol. I didn't notice that until after I took the pics, and he totally looks like aforementioned skeevy guy.

That's about all I can share of this set for now. You'll probably see more, eventually, but this project is still in pre-production, so I really have no time frame for when that might be.

For now,  I'm officially on vacation! (Well, sort of a vacation. I have loads of stuff I'm doing, but I don't actually have a job at the moment. Sounds like a vacation to me!) I don't start my next film project until the beginning of December, so I have close to 2 weeks off! So far, I've started (thinking about) making some Christmas gifts, and I've even done a few customs, for people who've emailed me the past few months. (I've tried to touch base with everyone who emailed me while I was gone. If I've missed you, feel free to go ahead and email me. (It's in the about me, up there on the sidebar.) ) 

I'm thinking about taking some customs on a case by case basis when my workload is light enough, but the only thing predictable about this job is that's it's completely unpredictable, lol. So, I'm not sure how often that will be. But, we'll see. You can always email me, on the condition that you are not crazy. Seriously, do not email me if you are a nutbag, if you want me to build you an entire house in 2 hours for 5 dollars, or you are a creepy stalker. (My inbox has been quite interesting the last few months, lol. Quite a few oddball stories I could tell you... but probably shouldn't. ;) )

Aaaaanyhoo. Guess what? It's five in the morning, I've been typing for a couple of hours, and it will probably take me a few more posts to get somewhat caught up. Oh well! I'll probably mix it in with some current posts, because I've got some doll stuff in the works some folks might like to know about... ;)

Also, I'm going on a date later today, to my favorite date spot. You all know what it is. The Dollar Tree! Next to the Dunkin Donuts! Wooooo! (Clearly I've posted about this slice of heaven much too often, because in my attempt to snag a picture of it, I entered "Chicago Dollar Tree Dunkin Donuts" into google images, and it came back with a bunch of pictures from this here blog, lol!)

Anyway, I'd better catch a few zzzzzzz's. See ya soon! :)