That incredibly well-kept secret, the woven animation project, is now no longer a secret. The movie, entitled Weave!, was introduced at the Complex Weavers Seminars held last week in Albuquerque. Although we can't release the completed video on the web until August 22 (read on), I can share with you my introductory remarks at the screening. When the time is right, I'll post a link to the movie here and will give it to Complex Weavers for their website, too.
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Weave!
Welcome to the world premiere of Weave!, an animated film like no other. Disney and Pixar–eat your hearts out!
I’ll tell you a little bit of the background of this movie, and then we’ll get straight to the screening.
First of all, this is a collaborative project by twelve intrepid weavers. Some of them are here tonight. Please stand and be recognized: Ruth Blau, Margaret Coe, Matt Eardley, Sue Farley, Bonnie Inouye, Penny Peters, Neki Rivera, Sandra Rude, Alice Schlein, Pat Stewart, Janet Stollnitz, and Margaret Thorson.
I first got the idea of animating woven cloth after seeing a knitted animation on YouTube. It was by the Canadian band Tricot Machine, and consisted of hundreds of frames of knitted imagery, all scanned and assembled into a short animation called Les Peaux des Lievres. It was beautiful. Weavers could do that, I thought.
I experimented with a few short videos of my own, by grabbing frames from existing videos and weaving the images on my TC-1 jacquard loom, then scanning and reassembling the frames into new videos. The process worked, and I realized that dobby weavers could do this kind of animation too.
But the process was very labor-intensive, and I knew I needed help. I put out a call on WeaveTech, and twelve other weavers agreed to join in the project. These folks are all over the map - East Coast, West Coast, and one weaver in Spain. It was a perfect internet-based project.
The ground rules were simple: weave ten or more panels in black and white yarn. The panels had to be of a size to fit on a scanner bed, and each panel in a set had to be slightly different so that when assembled into a video, they would appear to be animated. The color palette was limited to black and white in order to impose some unity on an otherwise extremely varied collection of work.
We had two jacquard weavers, and dobby weavers with 16, 24, and 40 shaft looms who submitted work. Some weavers paired up, with one designing and the other weaving. Others designed and wove their own panels. Some did both. The weaving deadline was January 1, 2010.
After I received all the weaving, I scanned the panels and assembled them into a movie with the software Photo to Movie, an easy-to-use program that runs on Mac or Windows. The program is really designed to make slide shows of the Ken Burns variety, but by changing the timing of the slides to 1/10 of a second each, I was able to force the scans to run at 10 frames per second, a reasonable rate for an animation.
When the visuals were finished, we had the very good luck to have the services of a talented musician/composer, Hank Childers, to provide the sound track. Hank also happens to be the husband of Marg Coe, one of the project members. Thank you, Hank!
I tested the finished movie on my grandchildren, and they pronounced it awesome, so I knew we had a hit on our hands.
It is an amazing four minutes long, and we’ll get to it right now. But first I want to share some fantastic news with you. At the suggestion of Penny Peters, we entered the video in ITAB, the First International Techstyle Art Biennial 2010: Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Fiber Art, opening at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles on August 22, and it was accepted!
So thank you to all the wonderful artists who had the vision to know we could create something great together. It was a privilege to work with all of you.
You can see the woven panels in a special exhibition right here at Complex Weavers. It will be up through Wednesday. Thanks to Ruth, Janet, Marg, and Sandra for organizing this exhibition.
And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Weave!
[The movie was then shown to the 200+ people in attendance, and received a standing ovation.]
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Here are a few photos (courtesy of Bruce) of the woven pieces shown in tandem with the video: