I have a confession to make.
I am completely and utterly addicted to making stopmotion and hand drawn animation films. From whence does this latent desire from filmmaking arise? I have no idea.
Storyboarding
White-Harp Reviews A CURSE DARK AS GOLD
Another White-Harp review vlog! She stayed up so late finishing A CURSE DARK AS GOLD by Elizabeth C. Bunce that this one isn’t quite as coherent as her review of SHIVER.
P.S. You can follow her vlog reviews on YouTube or Vimeo.
Both she and I really thoroughly enjoyed it, and my review follows beneath the cut.
Then Again, Maybe Not
So when I said I don’t want to be an animator anymore…I might have been lying. I discovered this great programme for Mac called Pencil and it may be the most awesome piece of software in the world (except for Scrivener, the greatest writing tool in all of existence). To prove my point, I made a little animation last night in under 10 minutes.
96 frames in under 10 minutes. That is GENIUS. Granted, 96 frames is only 8 seconds (I’m drawing at 12 frames per second, not 24), but most of my animation isn’t for feature film length purposes—just clips I can stick into White-Harp’s book review vlogs. Instead of individually drawing pictures over and over and scanning them individually, I can simply “onion-skin” the next drawing over it, like an actual flipbook. You should have seen the setup I had the last time: I don’t have a lightdesk, so I was hunched with a lamp between my legs, trying to shine it through a semi-transparent clipboard. Oi.
Speaking of which, I’m hoping to get her review of A CURSE DARK AS GOLD filmed and edited tonight. We shall see. I have a million things to do and on top of that, it is Bones night, which means it’s Sofa and my time to be together with me in New York and her in Virginia. I miss my Soph. :(
I Like Thieves
A while back my friend Kate recommended THE GOOD THIEF by Hannah Tinti, but I never got around to reading it before yesterday.
THE GOOD THIEF by Hannah Tinti
Ren is one of the many orphaned wards at St. Anthony’s, hoping to be adopted by a family before he grows too old and must be shipped off to the military. Unfortunately Ren is at a distinct disadvantage: he is missing a hand from an incident he can no longer remember.
But one day a man enters the monastery claiming to be Ren’s older brother, spinning a fantastic tale about how Ren came to St. Anthony’s and about how he lost his hand. He leaves with this man, but learns very quickly this mysterious stranger is not what he claims to be. The man styles himself Benjamin Nab: a soldier, a sailor, a farmer, a fisherman, a grave digger—but it becomes clear that all these personas are false even as his connection to Ren is real.
I was initially led to believe this book was YA, but it is not. I wonder why it wasn’t marketed to the YA sector as a “crossover” novel because I definitely think it has potential. In voice and execution it reminded me a bit of Marcus Zusak’s THE BOOK THIEF, which was originally published as adult fiction in Australia before being marketed to the YA audience in North America.
CORAM BOY by Jamila Gavin
Marketing and publicity questions aside, the book THE GOOD THIEF reminded me most of is the English YA novel CORAM BOY by Jamila Gavin, which won the prestigious Whitbread Award in 2000. I saw the stage adaptation when I was living in London and then promptly bought the novel, but Gavin’s work failed spectacularly when transferred Stateside. I have no idea why; I thought it was haunting and Gothic and creepy, but critics were unimpressed. I mean, it was blurbed by freaking Philip Pullman.
On the other hand, Tinti’s work seemed to be well-received here, even though the story was essentially the same. They even take place around the same period of time, although one is set in New England and the other in London. Don’t get me wrong, I thought the novel was haunting and mysterious and quite gripping, but I kept thinking I’d read this before.
Recommended, although I would like to put in a word for poor Jamila Gavin. She’s pretty awesome, I swear! If you read THE GOOD THIEF, I suggest you also pick up CORAM BOY.
White-Harp Reviews SHIVER
I used to want to be an animator.
NOT ANYMORE. No wonder traditional handdrawn animation became passé. Even drawing the scant 25 frames in here almost drove me batshit insane.
I procrastinate a lot. I often procrastinate from doing creative things by…making other creative things. In this case, I’m trying not to look at the flaws Scrivener keeps pointing out in my manuscript.
Mostly I’ve been inspired by Maggie Stiefvater who, in addition to being a wonderful writer, is a multi-talented woman. I just loved her stop-motion trailer for SHIVER that I decided to have a go at something similar myself. White-Harp has also been pestering me for ages to make her into a famous internet star and gladly jumped at the opportunity to make her opinions known via video blog.
