PeaceTime - Episode 3: A Whale

My meditation videos are now a trilogy.  Presenting my brand new short "A Whale".  It's an undersea guided meditation for guppies of all ages.  

 

The team from the first two shorts is back, with Jess Lakin's gentle voice leading the journey.  Jess actually sat in the Easy Pose yoga position while recording.   After a few slow, deep breaths,  she began extemporizing on the journey of a whale traveling through the sea.  There was no script.  I gave no direction.  She just went with the flow, pun intended.   

My job was then to provide visuals to the audio.  I designed it for simplicity, knowing I would be animating it completely on my own, and not wanting to spent ten years doing so.  It was all done in Adobe Animate.  I don't build rigs, just approach it like old school limited animation.  The biggest challenge for me was in design and color, which I don't get involved with too much in my studio work.  This was largely improvised as well.  

Composer Ian Rees squeezed me in between feature films he was scoring.   As with Jess, I let him surprise me.  The only rule we've had with these shorts was that sound effects must be done musically.  No foley.   He used instruments ranging from a cello to a Brazilian cuica drum.  He created a musical undersea world that completely elevated my visuals.  The results left me grinning ear to ear.

In nearly 42 years in animation, it's still a thrill when all the elements come together and a film becomes a thing of its own.  Like a cartoon Dr Frankenstein - it's alive!  IT'S ALIVE!!!

Enjoy and please share.  Namaste!  NAMASTE!!!

-Steve 

PeaceTime: A Soaring Eagle

 

 I am quite pleased to present my new short, "PeaceTime: A Soaring Eagle".  It's the second of what I hope to be a series of such guided meditations for children.  I collaborated once again with Jess Lakin, who improvised the meditation in Ian Rees' recording studio.  From her recording, I came up with visuals and animated it using Adobe Animate.  Being a spare time project, this took two years for me to complete.  Ian then brought it all together with another charming and inventive score.  

As I said, I'm quite pleased.  And I hope you'll be too.   And check out my other PeaceTime video "A Royal Frog".

Steve

 

Introducing....PeaceTime

After two years of working in fits and starts, I am very pleased to present "PeaceTime: A Royal Frog". 

I got this idea a while back (2017-ish?) as an answer to the loud and obnoxious programming that is fed to kids, ad nauseum, through 24-hour cable and streaming video - yes, the stuff that pays my mortgage.  I wrote the idea down in a sketchbook and let it ferment.   

At some point, I talked about it with my old friend Winter Reign, a far-out progressive gal with two small kids and no TV.  She loved it, somewhat surprised it came from such a Three Stooges loving, blue collar guy.  She invited me to a Kundalini yoga class deep in the heart of Topanga Canyon.  It seemed like a dare, and so I went.