Welcome to my quirky collection of resources, research, and personal work that explores how animation is an eclectic blend of the visual, literary, and performing arts… hence “eclectimation”! While it’s essential as an animator to look at other animation, the surest way to be mediocre is to ONLY look at other animation!

As a visual story-telling medium, animation draws from a long history of theater, puppetry, dance, drawing, painting, sculpture, music, photography, film, architecture, literature, poetry, and other creative pursuits often collectively known as the arts. And those arts have always explored nature, science, philosophy, society, culture, religion… anything and everything, from the ridiculous to the sublime, poking around in that rich tapestry of existence called “being human”.

Speaking of rich tapestries, or things kinda sorta like that… below is a piece I created in the 90’s when I lived in New York City, while owning my stop motion / mixed media animation studio, One Eighty One Productions, Inc. (You can see the company demo reel in the “About” section.) During that time I tried to regularly make non-animated art in variety of media to keep myself “fresh” as an animation director/producer (and still do). Simply titled, “Paper Quilt”, is made from many scraps of paper color xerox images I had left over from collages (I belonged to the International Society of Copier Artists, aka ISCA, at the time — really!) which I combined using a sewing machine and bordered with some woven newspaper strips. I finished it by attaching sequined birds and moons, adding streaks of ceramic waxes, and glazing it with acrylic paint and polyurethane. I intentionally left many of the sewing threads long, instead of trimming them, to act as “physical lines” and add texture. And voila, an eclectic tapestry… or at least a weird quilt-like thing.

So what does this have to do with animation? I usually don’t know what I was truly interested in and learned from making something until after I’ve made it. In this case, I realized after the fact that I wanted to create a static field / window screen area with the visual energy and suggested movement of little components within it, experienced through a thin atmosphere of shimmering layers…. an implied animated world of scraps. Yep, I eclectimate!

You can see more of my non-animation art in the “Becky’s Art” menu section above, next to “About”. Further musings and curiosities about the visual, literary, and performing arts as they obtusely relate to animation coming soon as this blog expands and develops. (Roll over up there and you’ll see the sections under construction.) I welcome your comments.