I'm proud to announce here the release of an amazing DVD I have been privileged to co-produce with my friend and colleague Steve Stanchfield and his company Thunderbean Animation...STOP MOTION MARVELS!
This disc has been in the works for about 7 years, and Steve and I would talk about it often, waiting for all the necessary material and research to be collected at just the right time. The material you will find on his disc is nothing short of amazing, particularly the lost shorts by the Kinex Studio. I was blown away by these films when I first saw them, and I'm so glad the secret is out for all the world to enjoy them. Steve and his colleague Stuart McKissick did a great job compiling all of the research behind these shorts, all laid out in a 12-page booklet that is incredibly well-written. Commentaries are contributed by Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh at Screen Novelties, Puppetoon animator/puppeteer Bob Baker, Larry Larson, Jim Danforth, and also Steve Stanchfield and myself (commenting through Skype between BC and Michigan).
I also re-animated Steve's ThunderBean logo in stop-motion using tiny clay replacement puppets, and have documented the production process in my new book.
Trying to fill the blog up with some random highlights of interesting things that have happened recently during the interim months of finishing my book and gradually coming out of hiding. Let's see...
Ariel was in a JELLO commercial! Through random pulling people off the streets of Ladner and offering to shoot them eating pudding cups, Ariel got picked to be in the final cut. For this 1 second of fame, she got $500, which pays for her plane ticket to Michigan & New York later this summer. We might need to get her in pictures if we want to travel more eh? Watch for her to flash in at the :20 mark.
I got to travel across Canada to give some Info Sessions for VanArts, visiting Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton. Didn't see much of Winnipeg at all, but I did get to meet a fellow artist from the online stop-motion community, Emily Baxter, known online as emmyymme...always a neat thing to meet online folks in person. Saskatoon was quite a beautiful city and I got to catch up with my old friend Augusto Kapronczai and see the animation studio where he's working. The whole time I was traveling across various time zones through hotels and family homes, my book was in the middle of the editing/layout process and the editors were scrambling to squeeze in all the content...it was pretty crazy.
Let's see, what else...my dad visited us and we had a nice time hanging out with the kids and seeing sights of Vancouver.
3 generations of Priebe!
I won an award from the Canadian Church Press for my Breath of Life article!
I am also featured in a book from Belgium about puppets. The author, Hubert Stuyvert, wrote to me about a year ago asking me to contribute some words and images about stop-motion puppetry, specifically how to apply it to teaching children. So I sent him a little blurb, and it's all been translated into Dutch. The rest of the book looks great...I wish I could read it, but apparently they're seeking a publisher to print some copies in English.
Found an old family photo of my ancestors, Bartholemew and Gertrude von Potassium-Spatula. Strangely enough they look so much like my own kids.
We've also had lots of weddings, lots of fun family gatherings, and lots of wine (well, me at least).
I'm gradually moving into a new role at VanArts, dissolving out of Admissions and into the role of Communications Director, which means doing more of the stuff I enjoy like videos, web stuff, publicity, and maintaining the website & social networking. I'll be learning lots of new stuff so expect some new developments coming soon, including a new website for myself on the side. Oh yeah, and the school is also moving into a new building. Woot.
And finally, my new book is now in stock. Here is my little teaser commercial for it.
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It was another successful run of Breath of Life this year, with a great team of regular and new volunteers and participants. Workshops were led by myself, Gautam Modkar, Raghuram Vannemreddy, Blake & Nicole Standard, Bronwen Kyffin, Melanie Vachon, Mike Jahnke and Jenn Isaak.
