Tag: animation

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Unveiling the Magic for 2023: It’s Almost Time for Gothtober

The Moon is out, and so is all that goes bump in the night

Hold onto your hay bales, we’re about to bring you our annual anticipated countdown of spooky and artistic Autumnal delights!

We’re pleased as pumpkin pie to report that Gothtober is now 21 years old. Gothtober is old enough do drink! Our 2023 edition contains creative offerings catered to this new milestone through the theme: “Potions and Elixirs” (in addition to the usual theme, which is simply “Halloween.”)

At the strike of midnight our calendar unveils a new contributor each day of October. In case you’ve never experienced it before, we’re taking you on a lil’ artistic journey.

Enjoy a celebration of the holiday’s rich traditions, and eerie charms, with an ability to stir the cauldron of your imagination. I don’t censor anyone, so it’s kind of a blend of both dark and delightful. For example, you can expect just about anything! There will be many short movies. Gothtober’s also got recipes, and crafts! We’ve always got a diverse ensemble ranging from veterens like Jenny Walsh, an artist who has been in the calendar since 2004 to her son, Harry, an emerging talent, who is now a Gothtober artist as well!

Best thing about the Gothtober Countdown Calendar? You don’t have to go anywhere or do anything. You can find Gothtober.com on your Desktop, tablet, or phone! While older parts of the calendar (dated all the way back to 2003) are not accessible yet, we’ve worked hard to make sure the NEW version of Gothtober can be accessed by anyone with a computer screen. As Head Candy Corn of Gothtober, I welcome you to the mysteries, the magic, the madness of this thing we build every year, brought to you, just a click away.

Yours in goblets of gross gooey gulps of rat’s blood and kitten eyeballs,

JP Head Candy Corn

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It’s an Ollie Gothtober Day 3!

Welcome to DAY 3 of the Gothtober Countdown Calendar! Ya ya go click on day 3!

We asked Ollie about this charming autumn vignette and here’s the scoop:

These Halloween Kitties were made using Procreate on an iPad, which is what I’ve been learning on during quarantine!

They’re based on the feral floofs that like to lounge in our backyard. (I love them so much 😭💖😭)For this piece they are hanging out in Joshua Tree because I miss visiting it (and also because cactus and Joshua Trees are really fun to draw!)

I love drawing deserts because they’re the complete opposite of the landscape I grew up w/ on the east coast 🤗

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Gothtober Day 16: Mom and Son Haunted Battle Collaboration!

Visit www.gothtober.com and click on DAY 16 to see a haunted battle!
I made friends with Kendra in the year of 1990 when I knocked on her dorm room door and asked her if she would be my friend. She said YES she would be my friend even though she BARELY KNEW ME, which is one of the reasons she is such a quality person. The last time she made a Gothober piece, it was probably about 10 years ago or more, and it was about spider fear. She thought that perhaps she’d do a Gothtober piece this year, and asked her six year old son, Miles, to be the director.
The two put their heads together, and built a really cool haunted house, then had fourteen days of intensive storyboard meetings, concept exploration, and technical assessments. There were, like all good collaborations, some creative differences. When all the details were hammered out, they then put on their animator hats and went to work, and recorded their own sound, and I must say, the Haunted Battle is quite a SUCCESS!

The stage is set with a moody storm, there are skeletons and there’s lightening and WHAT’S THAT?!? Do I hear broad swords? The clashing of metal? Smoke and the creaking of haunted doors? What will happen next? Guess you better watch and see!

Find out more about the mother/son team known as Scribble Scrabble  here! 

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Gothtober Day 9 Story Time with Pauly G

Visit www.gothtober.com and click on DAY 9 to see an animated story by Pauly G and family!

Paul and his siblings used to listen to Nanny BeeBee’s Gruesome Tales that she would tell them before bedtime. “Buddy and the Fishhook” is a TRUE story that took place in Philadelphia in 1921.

Told with animated paper cut-outs with limbs sewn together with needle and thread, this little story is short, sweet, and well… kinda GROSS! Paul said that this story his Grandmother told always held a vivid scene in his imagination, and he said that it was lots of fun to bring to life.

This wasn’t the only one she told either, she had many, some of them quite macabre!

Future Gruesome Tales might include:

Aunt Rose and The Million Dollar Pier, Elsie and The Box of Chocolates, The Cat o’ Nine Tails and Poor Adeline.

Paul’s Mother, Marcy, does the narration on this, and his son, Francis, plays the piano at the end! Thank you to Lecie, Trixy and everyone who came together to make a really great mini-gristly project!

Paul’s bio and other Gothtober contributor’s bios are here! 
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A Glorious Stop Motion Explosion with Gothtober Day 7’s Harold!

screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-6-29-29-pm Visit www.gothtober.com and visit DAY 7 for a remarkably tremendous stop motion love letter to the 1995 film “Sense and Sensibility” from Sony Studios.

Harold has admittedly seen this movie more than 100 times, and decided that it was high time a bit of art should be dedicated to a certain celebrated cinematic moment. If you have seen this movie, you know exactly what we’re talking about, and if you don’t… well, perhaps it’s time you rented it on Netflix!

Upon watching this elegantly gorgeous and grotesque build-up of paper parts animation, enjoy the satisfaction and release accompanied by some finely drawn gore that just makes me give an unfiltered, unfettered hat’s OFF to our animator! Undoubtedly, the young and capable and entirely talented Harold spent way beyond any acceptable amount of hours to build this work, and it’s just breathtaking. As you may or may not know, the theme of this year’s Gothtober Calendar is “Metamorphosis” and I dare say, this theme is quite gallantly on display for day 7, we kid you not.

The spirit of this short film is a perfect visual response to both the literary and filmic concept of repression, the classic real kind from 1795 and perhaps the modern, current repression we’re watching while an orange-faced candidate for the presidency makes brains explode merely by saying things out of his face hole. screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-6-35-07-pm

The age of original, soul-crushing good-old-fasbioned Jane Austen-era repression was so strong, mind you, that Ms. Austen remained the anonymous author of Sense and Sensibility until after her death! This woman wrote in a room that had a squeaking board outside the door so that if anyone approached while she wrote, she could quickly hide her manuscript and disguise what she was doing by twiddling her thumbs or knitting lace or whatever people were doing to get themselves through the Napoleonic war. This was not a time to be getting your social vision on, it would be decades before the ethics, passion and exploratory notions in Sense and Sensibility would be truly appreciated.

In Lettres Philosophiques, Voltaire writes

What we find in books is like the fire in our hearts. We fetch it from our neighbor’s, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

And so we’re seeing some of that deep appreciation here in a multi-level artistic accolade from a dedicated fan to a moment, a moment that encapsulates the synthesis of sense and sensibility, in an outrageous transformation followed by a quiet and faithful heartbeat, a bloody, happy heartbeat.

Thank you, Harold Harold, for the blood, sweat, and tears!

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Don’t Mess With the CAT! Day 29

From two young film maker brothers arrives a cautionary tale about how NOT to treat your feline friend!

When Max and Jay decide to mess with the cat, Children of the Corn, they learn the hard way that cats do NOT take kindly to human shenanigans! KP Pepe produced and directed this collaborative film, it’s got some sweet stop motion and some expert animal wrangling! I asked KP the inspiration for the work, and here’s the scoop:

We pretty much let Jay come up with the story with some assistance from Max and me and Candi. The boys/Candi made the bulk of the sets and we took turns animating it. They had a big role in the story and dialogue.

This is a fine family project, big props to everyone who worked so hard on it, especially Mama Candi, who was production designer! And very big thanks to Children of the Corn, who is a BIG Gothtober Star, we hope you get all of the fish you like!

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Confectionary Crazy with Jenny Walsh • Day 23

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There is a LOT of candy in today’s Gothtober 23rd cinematic jaunt, so much that you may feel your glycemic index go up just a bit watching today’s animated diversification of candy craziness!

Jenny Walsh, fim maker, commercial animator, teacher, and martial arts mama has recruited her sons, Harry and Liam, to help her make the shapes march and twirl across the candy screen! They could not be learning from a better animator, Jenny Walsh’s locomotion skills are to be envied, she knows analysis and locomotion, squash and stretch, the rhythm and blues of making stuff move. Habitually, Jenny Walsh is always Day 23 on the Gothtober calendar, so for past glimpses of her greatness, visit the Gothtober archives and check out all of the twenty-threes.

It is indeed a conspiracy, a plot to inspire trick-or-treating and rabble-rousing of the best kind. 

You’ll dig the 8-bit soundtrack, colors and composition of this animated piece. Jenny’s husband, Dave, did the editing and post, so it really is a family affair!

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Kimberly Kim DAY 21

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Today’s beautiful short film DAY 21 on Gothtober haunts and hypnotizes your senses and reels you in to have a moment with the elusive gravity of existence. Kimberly Kim is a Los Angeles-based ornamental sound etcher who searches for sounds to sketch on trees. You may be more familiar knowing her as the silent  smiling bar maiden pouring delicious devil horn poisons and mixing tasty double vision snake oil elixirs at Akbar.

This is her Gothtober debut. Shifting footage, colors, animation, movement comes together to form a visual incantation accompanied by a temporal, resonant melody.

Do you hear a ballad? Do you see water? Whose face is that anyway? My eyeballs are fascinated! 

Peer into this piece, investigate, watch, and investigate further. Decipher what you will, the limitless availability of it gives you all you need and then some. There are a million and one ways to make a film, here is another, we are thrilled to present it.

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Euro Monster Smash from Frankfurt, Germany for DAY 13

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Hold onto your eyeballs, it’s DAY 13 with the Chambers!

Not all that far from Stuttgart is Frankfurt, but wow is Frankfurt far from Gothtober Headquarters in Los Angeles! We’re so excited to offer MORE work from distant lands, a Gothtober family in Germany! We love the internet because it lets art travel here from outer space! Bridging the gap from bratwurst to hot dogs is the miracle of online perseverance, a true international collaboration, we couldn’t be prouder of our International participants!!!

Here is where the Chambers family is sending their art from, it’s out there! Someday we hope to visit!

There are many monsters from mythology you do not want to meet, but we must insist that you meet these. Thought up by the young Nigel and then brought to life with his parents, Christy and Brian, here we have quite a gruesome gallery of beautifully illustrated creatures thoughtfully caged behind your computer screen so that you don’t have to worry about safety. It’s a mixed media treasure trove of droll entertainment.

The Chambers are like the Frankensteins, but instead of using human remains and lightening, they’ve paper puppets and stop motion magic to breathe life into thirteen creations. It’s alive… IT’S ALIVE!!!! 

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Caleb Ossmann Rocks LEGO Stop-Motion Baggage Claim for Gothtober DAY 5

Caleb Ossmann, building his Gothtober piece!
Caleb Ossmann, building his Gothtober piece!

The airport hijinx continues as we visit the haunted LEGO version of LAX’s famous terminal 4!  Caleb Ossmann is the youngest artist that Gothtober has ever hosted! Caleb is 13 years old, he’s worked very hard on this gorgeous Gothtober piece for DAY 5, and we salute him heartily, great work, Caleb, thanks for showing us your amazing talents! As an Experimental Animation major at CalArts, I can tell you that animators have to be just a little insane to keep all those stop-motion pieces synced and fluid. The Young Ossmann shows us here that he is well on his way to becoming a master animator, and will undoubtedly create ever more fun and fascinating works of art. We’re very excited to have him aboard, he’s exactly the kind of insane we’re looking for when it comes to Gothtober Greatness!

Fun Facts about Caleb Ossmann’s Piece for Gothtober!

-Caleb has been making stop motion movies since he was 10.
– He filmed all the work himself and composed the music in his dad’s studio.
-The stop motion process took over 50 hours, and then some.
-He also had an essay deadline about the constitution the SAME day!
-The back wall is inspired by the famous LAX colored tile wall.
-He made the whole movie in a closet under the stairs.
-Caleb and his brother Archer have appeared in past Gothtober offerings, most notably “Aunt Connie” starring Michele East and Barry Morse.

The tile wall at LAX’s Terminal 4 is very famous, since thousands of people have seen them since their completion in 1961 by Charles D. Kratka (Oct. 12th, 1922 – Nov 8th, 2007). Some say the wall’s tile represented the changing seasons, other’s have heard the tile colors are supposed to symbolize flying across the U.S. Here’s a little video someone put on YouTube so you can experience the tiles for yourself!