BLOGAHOMA

Star Sprite all began during Michael’s chemo session. They can run anywhere from less than 2 hours to more then 7. It took me several sittings to come to the realization that although it was good to be there with him I could use the time to draw. And so I began. Since it is the Christmas season and I am an illustrator from a toy and greeting card background what I drew were holiday themed. Sometimes I struggle with a drawing but while drawing Star Sprite my pencil seemed to have been guided by its own GPS. Once on paper and then scanned and color rendered the simple shapes lead me to the inevitable question, “Would this work as an Animation?”. The simple shape of the sprite reminiscent of Scandinavian candle powered carousels lent it self to animation. I loaded up Cheetah 3D, found a tree out of my previously created objects and so it began. My daughter said I needed music that sounded like twinkling stars. I found just the right music on Cylinder.de, “Winter Fairy” a piano piece by Caela Harrison. After deciding that the winter shot from our yard was a bit scrubby looking I downloaded the perfect piny image from Creative Commons. I did my final editing in iMovie including adding titles, transitions, music and timing. What you see here is the 3rd go around fussing with the details as artists will do.

The drawing took 45 minutes, color 45 minutes the animation 3 days off and on. It is hard for artists to estimate time. Time has so little to do with creative flow. The storyline (all one minute of it) is strictly mine. I am pretty happy with the results. Would I change it again? Yes. And that’s why I have to walk away from it now.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good sprite…..

For a long time I have ruminated about my monocular vision. Should I feel somehow cheated or is it a blessing in disguise. On top of one-eyed I am farsighted with astigmatism. Eye doctors are my best friends. Every two years my prescription has changed since I was 4 years old. That’s 30 eye exams and new prescriptions. I have memorized the eye chart. My left non-functioning eye sees only the top letter. The right does considerably better though with out glasses vision is blurred with halos.

One-eyedness has not stopped me from being an artist. It has stopped me from driving. I took drivers training years ago but when I took the test I didn’t see all the signs I should have and felt the roads would be safer without me behind the wheel. I failed driving twice but passed parking so I have remained parked.

Although I have read novels my preference is short stories, poetry, articles or nonfiction which I can ingest a little at a time. My right eye gets tired. Sometimes I prefer to put on the headset and have the articles on the web read to me while I scan which acts as a double sensory retention. And I love being read to. I have had the opportunity to hear the great ones…. Toni Morrison, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Alice Walker among them.

I know from reading about monocular vision that I do not have the usual depth perception.

Monocular cues are cues to depth that are effective when viewed with only one eye. Although there are many kinds of monocular cues, the most important are interposition, atmospheric perspective, texture gradient, linear perspective, size cues, height cues, and motion parallax.

Unlike most of the movie audiences I am not looking forward to the age of 3D movies since they are set up for those with binocular vision. When an object is coming toward me it is another story. An sport where a ball or object is directed toward me immediately puts me in harms way, baseball, basketball, tennis, volleyball etc. etc. Those have hit me in the head way too often. Those sports are ones that I suck at, really. Swimming is also a problem as it requires taking off of the glasses and I am left in a blur. On the other hand if I am aiming at a target, lets say bowling, I do not suck quite as much. Actually I like bowling for that reason. My high game…. 167!

So what is the upside of monocular vision? Hard to say. I have a keen memory for what I see. I can draw/ sculpt from memory. Once when I was on a jury I came home and drew caricatures of the jurists from memory. I am also hyper aware of colors and patterns. It’s possible that similar to how ADD processes information, objects in a room all come into my sight at the same time without executive order of importance allowing an more interesting and creative view of my world. In addition I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t a tetrachromat.

“A tetrachromat is a woman who can see four distinct ranges of color, instead of the three that most of us live with.” It seems I can see the subtlest of variations of a color sometimes to the annoyance of others and to myself.
I would assume my my monocular vision has rewired my brain,  to wish for the use of both eyes would probably be a mistake.
The song Spider Web by Joanne Osborne says it best…

The world is made of spider webs
The threads are stuck to me and you
Be careful what youre wishing for
cause when you gain you just might lose
You just might lose your…
Spider web

Stapler Attachment
I started collecting staplers in earnest about July 28th 2009. At first it was ohlala look at this cool EM 230 Paris agrafeuse on Ebay and it’s so French! There was an identical one up but in red and they were asking $99 so I went for the one that was $8! Really! (Note the red one is still sitting there a year later.) And that is how it all started. I had bought staplers in the past then resold on Ebay wanting the whole time to keep them but then who needs more than one stapler? So how do I justify collecting them? Who wants to know? There are so many layers to collecting staplers. I love layers. Here are the dozen layers I have discovered: Maker, Type, Country, Year, Style, Inventor, Patent, Size, Material, Rarity, Color, Variation. So of course I have a database because I can. I use Bento for its visual appeal. But when all my best rationalizations for collecting stapling machines fail I pull out the art card. That’s right art doesn’t need a reason. I create Photoshop images and 3D animations and am currently working on stapler coveralls and a “This is Not Stapler” t shirt. Happy tangents to you!

I like the surprises doing a new thing brings. I now have invented ways to clean these little buggers. I have passed on this knowledge to other fledgling collectors when asked. Stapler collectors, I have discovered, tend to be detail and design fanatics which is ropes me in. Another enlightenment to me is their mechanical workings which, unlike newer gadgets like ipods and cellphones that leave me in the dark, the stapler can be understood one spring, one plunger, one anvil at a time. I now have stable of staplers numbering over 50 almost enough for a Stapler a Week (a great non-threatening stapler website BTW). I might just stay at 52. I have sold off ones I didn’t particularly like for various reasons. Not just dupes mind you. I like some staplers more than others like the Jakyneuf Agrafeuse which I just have to say “aucun merci” the next time it comes up for auction.  I’ve learned stapler in German (Hefter) and French which is pretty useless but fun nonetheless. And have come to realize that a package shipped from France can take 2 months but it will arrive. I’ve taken my staplers of interest to the Park Tavern for show and tell and on Facebook for the socialization. Because it’s NOT true “If you seen one stapler you’ve seen them all”.