I finally managed to get it all painted.

I think it looks rather nice when the beach, the sky, and the wheel complete the picture:

After finishing the boardwalk, I got the brilliant idea to sink hours of my life into a under boardwalk tableau. This was inspired by a section of the interviews in which my mother discusses how all sorts of unsavory activities used to take place under the boardwalk until it was finally filled in with sand. I attempted to illustrate the unsavory activities, although I have to admit – my mother never mentioned aliens, escaped convicts, or battling dinosaurs. The idea is for there to be a very short animation made by having the camera tilt down as my mother talks about the boardwalk.

Here is the initial sketch:

And the almost finished product:

I have since filled in some more of the color, but then I decided to go on a cleaning binge and the unfinished painting ended up under the bed. Next up: The animated puppets that will march along the sand.

Sketching out a circle this size was a real bitch, let me tell you. But cutting out tiny lattice work with an exacto knife was even worse. Hello, early onset arthritis.

Next it was on to the cars. Stark had the brilliant idea of using the largest pieces cut out from the wheel itself. That way they would be all the same size and it would save me the effort of having to cut out eight more pieces. Also, it saves paper! Brilliant! All I had to do was trim the corners a bit.

I also had to sketch out the support that will hold the wheel to the background piece, complete with tiny American flag.

Commence painting!

And finally, I worked on the cars. I trimmed the corners, cut out the windows and painted all eight cars. The colored cars will be the swinging cars and the white cars will be the stationary.

Next up, I would like to finish painting the background. Stark had an idea for making the boardwalk look how it used to, with space underneath where people could sit. Since I have the sand already taken care of with a sheet of beige paper, I figure I can just draw on the rest of the white paper below the storefronts. I was thinking that it would be the space below, then sand, then maybe even a world beneath the sand, like skeletons and garbage and even a dinosaur or a UFO… Anything is possible (and will add approximately seven more years onto the project).

I also have to work on the puppets for the credits sequence, starting with the Astroland Rocket and hamburger man. I am feeling by Michel Gondry and want to make a movie of me making the puppets by setting up a camera on a tripod to take a series of photos that can be animated.

Here is the electronic equipment that has been used so far in the making of this movie:

Pictured: Canon GL2 Digital Video Recorder, Zoom H2 Digital Sound Recorder, MacBook Pro, DV Tapes, Canon Powershot Camera
Not Pictured: Maxtor 1TB External Hard Drive, Canon Rebel XT

Here are the art supplies that we purchased for use in the animations:

Pictured: Coney Island: Lost and Found (reference images), sketch book, portfolio, some sheets of heavy poster board, a set of gouache paints, several synthetic brushes, a palette, a glue stick, an Exacto knife, thumbtacks, a cutting board, a protractor and compass set (from Dollarama! this is a low budget film after all), and a pencil case filled with pens, erasers, white-out, pencils, a bone folder, and a hole punch/awl.

Today, I did some color tests with the gouache paint. I wanted to make sure it could produce bright, circus-like, opaque colors with a minimum of effort. I haven’t worked with gouache before, so I was worried it would be too washed out. Luckily, it was perfect!

I also decided to plan out the background for the main credits sequence by making a scale drawing in my sketch book. I wanted to make sure there was enough room for the letters and puppets to move across the beach and be legible. It was important that the puppets also be of a size that is reasonably easy to cut-out and manipulate for the animations.

After struggling through incredibly simple math, I finally managed to hit upon proportions that I think will work rather well for the project:

After a recent brilliant decision to get in way over my head and add animated transitions and credits to the movie, I have felt newly inspired to get things moving again.

So far we have:

1. Went to Curry’s and picked up some basic supplies for paper cut out animation. Purchased: Notebook, portfolio, some sheets of heavy paper, cutting board, a set of gouache paints, paintbrushes and palette.
2. Made some preliminary sketches for the credits sequence, some basic animations, and a parachute jump transition.
3. Perused Flickr commons for public domain images of Coney Island, went through Coney Island: Lost and Found, adding post-its to every image that might be of use for transitions or flashbacks.
4. Installed Joomla on this domain to test it out for possible use as movie website.
5. Downloaded Celtx for use organizing storyboards, footage, sounds, and production materials.
6. Took notes on three DV tapes worth of footage, spanning from Summer 2007 to Fall 2008, and audio recordings from Summer 2008. Now I just need to transfer that to a searchable database before my handwriting becomes unreadable.
7. Finally finished cutting up the interview tracks, labeling them, giving them basic descriptions, and loading them to the temporary website.