New Kit being Tested

Website Design Update

Heres a little update on how the website is coming along.

Please leave feedback. What would you want from the site?

Lost in Space Model Kit

Starting a new kit

Tim and I have been trying to find ways to easily explain this project, but in the end I think the easiest way is simply by demonstrating it. Small Imaginings is about providing people with free, high quality, quirky 'story kits'. The kits will include casts of characters, with sets, props, and sounds. A kit could be printed out and used with a toy theater. It might be imported into Flash or After Effects and made into an animation. It might be used in a graphic novel or comic. It can be anything you want, and we truly hope you use them in ways we haven't even thought of.

Our purpose is the creation of 'malleable, dynamic worlds' (see my blog post 5\22\09) that encourage the creation and telling of stories.

I'm beginning work on a group of characters that will be my first kit. They are all head and shoulders, essentially, drawn from a set of medieval woodcuts which purported to show the relationships between physical characteristics and temperament. I'm planning a group of 6 or 7 images when the kit is completed. They will all have names and some indicators of character.

The 'story kit' will also include background images, a few props, and associated sound files. For all the images we'll include both high resolution and lower res versions scaled to match the backgrounds to simplify importing into Flash or another animation platform. After that, it's up to you.

Here's the first one. I haven't settled on a name yet, so if you have any suggestions ... I'm posting 3 versions to demonstrate how the mouth can be animated (this can be operated with 2 sticks or wires in a toy theater). The last version has a tongue - I'm hoping for some feedback on the tongue - good? Too much?







And another one ...

Reinventing the Wheel

So the title is a little misguiding. We aren't reinventing the wheel but the toy theater was built tonight. I know it has been done before but we can't even consider to do what we are doing without knowing the process first.

Heres a camera phone shot of our newly built and still very crude theater.

Rough Kit Test

Something we crudely put together earlier in the day.

Some Images

Before we explain further what we're hoping to accomplish we would like to show you a few representative images.

Something Very Interesting...

Here is a website you should be looking at.

http://www.xtranormal.com/

Small Imaginings

Welcome to the Small Imaginings page! In the next couple months Nathan Wagoner and I will be posting on here the beginnings of what we hope to be something very big. We're creating a community, a source for quality, interesting images, and a very useful tool for those interested in animation of any sort.

Still confused? It's ok we will be giving you more information soon. In the meantime take a look at this rough website design.