Welcome

to the 2nd iteration of the newsletter.

Contents:

1. Today’s Synopsis.
2. Recordings.
3. Stop Motion.

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Today’s Synopsis:

The World Precipice

“You have, as you know, skills that are rare. Yet, you have chosen to remain silent about these skills, even going so far as to obscure them. Few do this.”

Honey Savannah reads this line, which arrived by sleight-of-hand.

She tallies up her rare skills, and wonders how she can justify trusting the letter-writer. Because she would like to set off on the mission he describes.

Rare skills: synesthesia about voices. She hears them all in full color. And there’s her ability to change her own voice, with the texture equivalent of perfect pitch. She gigs as an audiobook narrator.

There is her pseudonym, and the hidden work: running a conspiracy tracking website.

And there are the subtle perceptions. Lies smell like sulfur. Auras gleam, and demons and angels sometimes appear with sideways glances.

Honey must find out what this mission is about. Four days later, she has a new ID, a new gold credit card, and a new alliance with The Magician. She is staying at an inn outside Savannah, notorious for its clientele.

And the apocalyptic moment opens up. The world precipice. She watches it happen.

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Stop Motion Animation

One of my foundational project goals is to publish without depending on using my face or personality. Turns out, this has a term in the social media world – it’s called “faceless marketing” or developing a “faceless account.”

From brief study, it’s possible, but harder to do. We human beings are entranced, attracted, or repelled by faces, and we rely on the face to provide some many interesting cues about the person.

Prior to social media, choosing to do “faceless” platform building was less of an issue because a single author photo would suffice. Now, there is space for everyone to broadcast a face, and we swim in a sea of personality – more than any prior time. But this makes sense! We are in the era of the individuality.

But back to the choice to do it different: one is faced with the question of creating good, appealing, sticky content without relying on a face. How does one make something (efficiently) that swims up to the surface in this time of personality?

So I return to stop motion. I happen to love this art form, when it’s done with real, tangible puppets. It’s material. It’s real. And producing stop motion doesn’t require staring at computer screen.

The process involves a computer to capture the images, but the animator herself stands by the set, touches the puppets, set, and props, and captures the images using a remote control device. Like most animators, I use Dragonframe. It’s an absolutely brilliant program for stop motion. Thus, the act of animating stop motion means posing puppets and props, and pressing real buttons. No need to touch an electromagnetic device in an ongoing manner. I can review the footage from a distance by pressing a button on the remote control.

Of course, stop motion is very slow to create. 24 frames per second. But, when a good social media video is about 10 seconds long, it starts to look a little more plausible.

The February Initiative

Prompted by a dear friend, all my close people chose words for the year. Mine is “Time becomes Space.” This phrase has many mysterious levels of meaning, but the most exoteric is: “feeling like there is enough space in my time.” Said otherwise, feeling like I have more sovereignty over time.

The simplest way for an artist with my disposition to achieve this is to get in the art-work-day before the real-work-day starts.

So, my February initiative is to wake at 5am, and have four solid hours for creative work before 9am and the real work starts.

It’s very dark in February at 5am.

Thanks for reading. 

Till two weeks.

Rose & Apophenia.

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