Painted - An Adventure in Stop Motion Body Art

Ladies and Gentlemen and everyone in-between - I am proud to say that my first stop motion experiment is finally complete!! It has been a rather lengthier process than originally anticipated but well worth the journey as I have learned a considerable amount about makeup, photography, lighting, animating and editing along the way - lessons I very much intend on carrying forward into the next installment :)

Painted is in essence an experiment that I embarked on in how to best animate body art and an attempt at giving a creative medium that I adore it's own personality. Along the way the paint started to take on a life of it's own and proceeded to lead me on a little adventure that pays homage to the many amazing artists who have inspired me over the years. The first few sequences were roughly storyboarded and went through several major changes as I started to learn more about what I was doing - whereas the latter came from moments of inspiration and developed more organically in a spur-of-the-moment kind of way.

Though I originally had a very different idea for the audio I found that the tempo of Flow Motion by my lovely friend Square One helped to give the images momentum they needed to keep ticking over happily. In the end I got so used to using the track when I showed the unedited version to friends or family that it became entwined with what I was doing and it therefore seemed fitting to scrap my initial ideas and keep it with the final cut :)

The animation has been online for a week or so now and I'm happy to say that despite it being just a silly experiment I've had some lovely feedback - including some very kind words from two of the incredible artists whose work inspired it :D

xxx

Painted: An Adventure in Stop Motion Body Art from Elvis Schmoulianoff on Vimeo.