Mantis Shrimp

I finally crossed something off my internet bucket list. Something out in the real world that you only hear about because the internet.

This creature is something I’ve wanted to see ever since I read that awesome Oatmeal post. I hope you’re already down the rabbit hole and know what I’m talking about. Colorful cartoon super-punching shrimp. That about nails it.

Or maybe you listened to the Colors Radiolab podcast and learned all about the MegaSuperRainbow spectrum of colors that they can see with their superior eye cones.

Or maybe you saw the PBS Deep Look vid.

or the Nat Geo one.

I was once where you hopefully are now and I filed it in the back of my mind that the Monterey Bay Aquarium houses one of these ferocious beauties.  

If you’ve got bad knees, this is as close as your going to get to one. Isn’t it cute?!

stop motion, some thoughts...

I’ve been working on an insanely difficult project in my real job. It’s a huge undertaking that I’ve made even more difficult by adding in stop motion elements. I LOOOOOVE stop motion. To me it’s one of the really magical things of cinema. I love the problem solving, the designing, the building with real materials, the focus on details and the absolute tediousness of the work. One mistake and you’re starting that whooooole scene all over again. Period.

It makes me hold my breath, crawl around on the floor, lift heavy objects, get glue and paint on all of my clothes, sweat under lights for hours—for a few seconds of footage. But to see something that I made, come to life is incredible. I love it.

Having said all of that, I need to save it for my own projects because it’s incredibly time consuming. No one in their right mind can really fully grasp the time it takes unless they too are insane enough to do it!!!

Our very 1st film project was a silly little stop motion in 2005-ish. Mariela and I are a team with stop motion. Together we can do anything. A couple that has been together for 17+ years, that can bicker about the dumbest things, are calm and collected for 4 hours animating a 10 second sequence together. It’s like our zen place. Each piece moved in rhythm, we sweat, we barely breathed and we finished. No bickering. No arguing. It was pretty beautiful. We should do it more often…