ToonLoop Remix from Society for Arts and Technology on Vimeo.

Yes, you read that right: realtime stop motion. While stop motion is, by definition, associated with a painstaking process of creating animation frame by frame, a free and open source tool takes a different approach. ToonLoop provides the usual stop motion tools for creating loops, but takes a live performance approach to the recording and playback process, so you can turn your stop motion into a performance. The creator brought up the tool Saturday at the Open Video Conference in New York and got just the reaction you’d expect - a few confused (if delighted) chuckles, and someone asking, “That must be … slow.”

Now, if the framerate is low, you have no one to blame but yourself.

For fans of animation and live visualism, though, this is a dream. The first build was in Processing for Mac and Windows, but a new version for Linux (which should also work on Mac) is built on Python (with PyOpenGL, PyGame, Video4Linux and — oddly — Pure Data for MIDI).

http://toonloop.com/
Developers: Alexandre Quessy and Tristan Matthews
Toonloop Download
Source on Google Code
More documentation of the project at Montreal’s SAT [in French]

In fact, I’m not sure whether I should tell you to download the thing or just run with the idea itself. (There’s no reason Java/Processing shouldn’t still work, by the way, if you use the excellent GSVideo library - and OpenFrameworks and others could be likely candidates, too.)

The idea is brilliant - and yet more evidence that being a visualist can be a much broader category than simply being a “VJ,” with the two-channel mix paradigm the more conventional term suggests.

And performances evidently look like what you might expect. Below, Joy Penroz uses Toonloop in Mérida, Yucatán, México, via the ToonLoop site.

Bonus video: as I was looking for more work done with ToonLoop (there’s not much out there just yet), I came across another creation by Joy Penroz. It’s not a stop motion performance, but it runs with parallel ideas, looping to manipulate time in a modern pop take on the work of Dutch master painter Jan Vermeer. The contemporary “Milkmaid”:

THEMILKMAID from Joy Penroz on Vimeo.

Extra thanks to Michela Ledwidge and Austin Gambles on Twitter.

There’s no supporting lesson to go with this clip, just an extremely good animated music video. Enjoy!

(Warning: Stylized cartoon boobies.)

WOOD from mc bess on Vimeo.

Thanks Karl.

Melbourne director and animator Matt Arnold has put together a lovely little cutout nautical world in After Effects [CDMo tag] for The Basics’ “Built This Ship”.

I’m currently working on a similarly nautically themed project, using similar post-production techniques, so it’s fascinating to see another artist’s take on the concept.

Via excellent video production site Pro Juice, who have also interviewed Matt on a previous video for Whitley.

Putting complex political issues into the form of art sometimes falls on its face. But art’s unique power to personalize and make big issues specific can be a powerful asset. We were already big fans of the animation work of Beeple, but the latest, hand-animated digital creation is especially poetic. It’s an essay on consumption, and it doesn’t focus – as the news has – on the crisis itself. Instead, in watching the idea of shelter blown to absurd proportions, in simple graphics reminiscent of The Sims, it gets at a notion of consumer excess that goes well beyond just the immediate, topical news. It’s an urgent cry for simplicity.

subprime from beeple on Vimeo.

There’s also a fantastic score, and the composer actually calls our attention this. (Not surprisingly, it has spread virally online, but I had somehow missed it – and it’s definitely a don’t-miss.) Kyle Vande Slunt writes:

It’s called Subprime and is an animated musing on our current financial crisis. The tag line is: "Watch the American housing market spiral out of control".

The visuals were done using Cinema 4d and the sound design / music were done using Ableton Live 8.

Thanks to Kyle and Beeple. Inspiring stuff, indeed.

Jack Lykins sends us a really amazing video he assembled using Ms. Pinky, the vinyl control system, and its included Maxi-Patch Max/MSP/Jitter patch to control animation interactively. We’ve seen vinyl triggering and controlling video, of course – as on the Serato VIDEO-SL, previously reviewed here. But there’s something about Jack’s style of “narrative” animation on the turntable that’s really compelling.

Hope to see more of this setup.

Previously:

Hands-on Review: Serato’s VIDEO-SL for Visual Vinyl Turntablism