My new film is a silent one about wet, foggy colors. It was raining in December and the roses looked droopy under the weight of the water droplets. Then the camera started going in and out of focus and I thought it made a good color show so I started to learn how to make it happen more and how to make the focus flutter. So I think that what is out of focus in the film is more important than what’s in focus.

Here’s a new film for the film fans who happen to stumble by. It’s a film about memory shifts, searching, losing something, trying to find the old image, trying to regain an old feeling or impression, capturing a season of life or the mind. As if one were thinking, “I can almost remember how it was and what we did that day so long ago. Where were we again? North somewhere? It was dark? No, the sun was out… wait, it was cold… I think.

Want to ruin Halloween?  Sure.  Why not?  Give it a try.  This puzzle has driven many players totally insane.  I’m actually not kidding.  I’m dead serious.  It’s really hard.  It can warp your helpless mind and make you smash your computer.  I have received more hate mail for this little puzzle than for any other reason.

Why don’t you try it?  Go ahead… see if you can solve it.

You won’t regret it… for a while.

More finger sketching from the iPod.  The major problem I see with drawing on an iPod or an iPhone is that it doesn’t work well in the sunshine.  You can’t see the screen well enough to draw.  Paper works better on a beach.

Drawn on my iPod with the Brushes app.  This one’s an ocean from memory.

During my vacation I took a few opportunities to sketch with the Brushes app on my iPod. Here’s a bottle with flowers on a windowsill.

I’ve been having fun with my iPod Touch today.  I got inspired to draw with the excellent Brushes app but my fingers are big fat and clumsy, so it required lots of zooming to make the view big enough so my painting wasn’t just a bunch of gigantic blobs.  I drew the umbrella against a backdrop of foliage in my yard.  The weather has been just as excellent as it should look in the picture.

I’ve learned that David Hockney, one of the greatest artists in the world, is drawing on his iPhone with the same application.  His drawings are much more successful than mine, but it’s fun for anyone to draw with a finger!

Last night I posted the background image of the snowy landscape for the next shot in the animated movie, The Visit.  If you’re interested, what I’ve done this evening is to take my background landscape and cut it in two pieces along the line of the little hill with the path on it.  The line goes more or less horizontally across the middle of the image.  That makes two images – one with the far away hills, sky and large trees on it, the other with the near ground and path on it.  In Adobe Flash, I place the two pictures on different layers.  The near ground image goes on the top layer so it stays in front of the background hills.  So it looks like a single image again, but now I have my little foreground hill on a different layer than my distant background hills.  Then I place an empty layer in my Flash program right between those two image layers.  This is where I animate the father walking with little Oksana.  So, when I’m finished, it looks as if they are coming up from just behind the little hill close to the viewer.  Click the play button above to watch them.

On top of everything I add a few layers of snow.  To give the illusion of depth, I make the top or near layers of snow move larger dots at higher speed than the lower layers which should look like snow that’s farther away.  I also drew a few pine branches and layered them in just behind some of the snow.  So there’s a quick little shot for our little movie.  I’ll go in and add some shading and light effects tomorrow so that it all looks just a little bit better.

We’re making a fairy tale.  What could be better than that?

After quite a long break for coffee and ice-cream that’s lasted since November 2007, I am picking up the film right where I left off and this is my image for the evening. It’s a background for a shot of Oksana’s father leading her from home and into the forest. I’ll start working on the two characters tomorrow. They will come up over the little knoll and walk toward us.  It’s amazing how difficult it is to start work on something like this again, but how pleasant the work is once begun.

Here is the latest version of the animation done so far:

The Make the Movie blog has all the posts from the beginning of this little production. You can see the pencil drawings, storyboard film, background paintings, and animation tests. You can also find the original story there.

The Visit is an animation I was working on about a year ago. The Flash player above includes everything I’ve done so far on the film. There’s no sound yet. It’s a rough edit of the animation as I go. The story is my adaptation of an old folk tale about a little girl who is cast out of her home to live in the forest. It’s a pretty serious and tough little story. No laughs really. I’m picking it up again to finish it. So I’ll be posting regular updates here for anyone who’s interested in seeing a short animated film reach completion.

When I previously worked on the film I blogged about the process and posted storyboard sketches and the full text of the story. You can read the blog about the making of The Visit here. Chances are, I’ll do most of the updating right here from now on.