The Animation You'll Never See

The boys and I were so pleased with yesterday's animation that we devoted a huge part of today to making a Lego animation in our biggest endeavor to date. We got a set (a Lego castle), made a backdrop, got ourselves situated with better lighting. We each played a different character, and we really enjoyed making it, even if it was more frustrating in some ways than a solo project, since we were all moving around our characters with different ideas of what could happen, and there were a few bumps of the camera, etc. I think Max really liked the collaborative effort, the way we were playing together at the same time that we were making the movie. We took photos on and off for about five hours, stopping for lunch, and then taking another break to watch Spongebob for a while.

It was our longest animation yet, with more than 700 photos when we finished, probably totaling only about 2 or 3 minutes (at most) when we ran it all together, but it was really funny when we watched it on the camera (and of course, it seems like it was even funnier now that we realize it is lost for all eternity). Yes, it's true. It's lost. I was downloading the photos, and some error occurred. I was clearly not thinking when the prompt came up to ask me if I wanted to keep the photos or delete the photos already downloaded. Without checking to see that they had indeed been downloaded, I just hit, "delete." It was one of those moments, where you realize as you are doing the actual thing that it is not a good thing, that you want to stop and rethink your decision. But also, like so many of these moments, there was no "undo," no "rewind," no way to even slow down the moment in which the photos were being zapped into nothingness. It was so sad. I let the realization of what I had done sink in for several minutes (after several other frantic minutes spent trying to find them somewhere) before I could bear to admit to Max what I had done. He did not take it well, although he was not as mad as I thought he might be. He said he felt so mad that he wanted to break a Lego but that he wouldn't. Otto, our optimist, said, "at least we had fun making it."

It is true. It was very fun. For me, stop motion animation is the perfect way to play Legos. I love the initial building of Lego sets, I like to read the instruction books and find the pieces, and I also like to sit and make up my own Lego creations with the boys, but I am not all that great when it comes to actually playing with a minifigure with them. My character will inevitably say something like, "What should we have for dinner?" or voice some other of my actual thoughts, proving I have snapped out of character and stopped playing in the moment. The start and stop of making the animation works so well for me. We all agreed it was good to be able to stop and get a drink or a snack or do something else for a while and then return to it. If my mind momentarily drifted to something else, it was easy to still play, as there were sometimes minutes between my character's gestures.

Max remarked how fun it was several times during the making of it, and he was sad when Otto lost interest midway through. Max and I moved all the characters by ourselves at that point, but after a break of an hour or more, Otto decided he'd come to helps us with the grand finale.

The final battle is actually all that we have left of the movie, for those were the 200 or so photos that didn't download with the first (deleted) batch. So perhaps I will find the energy to put those into iMovie, but without the introduction, it seems like it will only remind us of the part we do not have (the part where the queen finds a total mess that both the knights have made, the floor covered in fruit and croissants, and they eat and drink together, pass out from an enthusiastic toast, and then Boba Fett and an AT-AT driver travel through time in their Fiats to make a surprise visit to the medieval village, and the queen tries to knight them, but they make a narrow escape). But, if I look on the bright side, the ending will remind us that we had a lot of fun making the beginning part. Like the great term paper (or American novel) that so many of us have written and lost in a fiery computer crash, or that melody that I dreamed, then scrambled around in the dark to find a scrap of paper to write down in such a manner that I would not be able to decipher it in daylight, this animation is probably even better in our recollection than it could have ever been in actuality. It will reach legendary status among the three of us.

Or maybe we'll just do it all over again tomorrow morning. Either way, I guess it's all still good.

The Cossacks

Max was playing on the PBS kids website, where you can create a dance for Grover using several different ethnic themes. Max really liked watching (and especially hearing) the Kasatsky, a dance done by the Russian Cossacks. He has since tried to learn to do this dance himself and learned it takes a tremendous amount of strength in the upper legs and lower back and, well, everywhere, really. It's much easier with Legos, it turns out. Of course, they only briefly dance in this animation before they are distracted by cars and a snowspeeder and a surprise appearance from another favorite character.

This is, once again, an animation Max made without my help (he made another sudden decision that he wanted to make a movie, and I was so busy getting dinner together that I just propped the camera on the stand for him and left him to his work). Aside from my putting it into iMovie and helping him find some Russian music on iTunes, he did the rest on his own. We need to find him some better lighting and a good backdrop for future projects. But other than that, he's really getting good at these, I think.

Max wanted to give them Russian sounding names (they were originally named John and Dave), but Otto got very upset at the idea of his character having a name change. So after Max and I looked at a website of common Russian boys' first names, Max picked Nestor (this didn't really sound Russian to me, but Max liked it), and Otto agreed to change Dave to Dav, in the hope that that sounded more Russian.

All of Oil

Max was watching Arthur and came into the kitchen to ask, "You cook with olive oil, right?" And I said that I did, and he said, "I just learned it was olive oil, I always thought it was all of oil. Olive oil makes so much more sense."

Otto Philosophy 101

"If you think you are a dirtbag, you ARE a dirtbag. If you think you are a kid, you ARE a kid. If you think you are a nursie baby, you ARE a nursie baby!"