Category: Animations

Inflation animations for the Washington Post

The Washington Post (!) recently asked me to make a series of six short stop-motion animations visualizing what’s happened with inflation in the U.S. since early 2020, for an interactive piece by Damian Paletta. I said yes!

The project was an absolute blast to work on, and a terrific challenge with all the air physics involved, plus a tight deadline.

The resulting piece requires a subscription to view, but you can also see the animations in this Instagram post.  

Here are a couple of my lovely sketches based on the concept from the art director.

As you might imagine, making a balloon shrink and expand and float took some movie magic. By “magic,” I mean it was a lotta lotta DPNs to erase in Photoshop.

Here’s a wider behind-the-scenes look at my set. This shows my attempt to light everything to the best of my abilities.

Of course, I had to make a bunch of characters and props in a short amount of time for this project. Fortunately, they were all tiny and quick to design and make.

And there were quite a few things I didn’t have to design from scratch: the sun, the original-sized balloon, and the clouds are from my book Adventures in Mochimochi Land. Plus, a (modified) Bluebird of Crappiness stood in as Fed chairman Jerome Powell!

Big thanks to Emily Wright for hiring me for this dream project!

Happy October

via GIPHY

Happy October! 🎃
(Hope you’re not sick of pumpkins yet!)

Making this GIF was a little animation challenge for me—I wanted to see if I could incorporate a burst of photos (to capture pumpkins falling quickly) into an otherwise straightforward stop-motion animation. It kind of worked! I also briefly considered knitting an umbrella, but ended up just painting a paper cocktail umbrella because I had other stuff to do. 😬

Happy Pride

UPDATE! Just over $200 raised for Brave Space Alliance in June. Thank you, knitters!

via GIPHY

via GIPHY

The fight for equality continues, but it’s a good time to be who you are and love whom you love.❤️🏳️‍🌈✨

And it’s a good time for hugs!

And for the month of June, 100% of proceeds from sales of the Bitty Bathroom pattern collection, along with their bigger friends Tubby and Flushie, will go to Brave Space Alliance, a black-led, trans-led LGBTQ+ organization doing great work in underserved communities.