Animation
THE HIGHEST FORM OF ART
And I really mean that. Animation is physically and mentally draining. It’s nearly impossible, never rewarding, posture-killing, isolating, and constantly calling you back for more — more inbetweens, color layers, movement. Its difficulty is partially why I try to stick to my writing lane, but every so often I’m drawn back.
BOOK TRAILER
George Falls Through Time
Another book, another book trailer! I tried to keep things relatively simple with this one, mindful of my own bandwidth and the publishing timetable. I have this delightful habit where I like to tinker with a long animation sequence only to decide after weeks of work that I don’t have anywhere to put it. That’s how I ended up with those 1-second blips of action at the end of the trailer. I love how it turned out, but I do feel a slight heartache at what got left on the cutting room floor.
BOOK TRAILER
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite authors and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a book of his that I find myself continually coming back to. The novel starts as an surreal mystery—a missing cat, a missing wife—then careens into territory few writers are able to explore as adeptly as Murakami. Isolation, war, love, and memory all entwine in a narrative that swings into wild, unknowable places.
I’m too afraid to look back and check when I first started working on this animation. It started more as a proof-of-concept for me to test out different software and techniques I had never tried before, then kept getting bigger and bigger as these things tend to go. Honestly I don’t consider this finished and I wish I had more time and resources to devote to it, but I also know it will only eat away at me if I don’t just post it and officially move on. I’ve got other projects on the docket I’m already behind on!
So maybe I’ll come back to this, who knows. But also, maybe the frustrating, unpolished nature of it plays into the general theme of the novel. You’re left hanging. Things could be better, things could be worse.
BOOK TRAILER
The Disassembly of Doreen Durand
Unfortunately to my own mental/burnout detriment, novel writing and animation go hand in hand. They’re two practices that complement each other, so when my debut novel was published in 2021, I knew I wanted to create a book trailer.
I’m proud of the result, even though I can see all the room for improvement when I look back on it now. I think it accurately captures the vibe of the book: a Hitchcockian literary mystery that whips you around the world and out of it.