Sacrilege
music video, 2007
Artist:  Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys
Director: Theodore Cormey
Art Department: Empire Snafu, Juliet Schneider

The picture above shows the dolls I made of Walter and Edrie for the music video.

Visit the Army of Toys Facebook page

http://www.myspace.com/armyoftoys

director:  Juliet Schneider
music:  Charles Segal
title drawing: David Rosen
storyboard consultants:  Garabed Setrakian, David Rosen
animation assistants:  Chyle Crossley, Dorian Rose, David Rodal, David Rosen, Garabed Setrakian, Terra Friedrichs
co-editor: Garabed Setrakian

The story for Ova comes from a childhood experience of mine, attempting to incubate a wild bird egg.  Like a lot of my work, Ova evolved over a few years, enduring three studio moves and several intervening projects.  I started making sketches, notes and shadowbox assemblages relating to eggs around 1995.  I started building the set in summer of 2000, but the actual production took place mostly 2005-2007.  Ova had its world premiere at the 2008 Woods Hole Film Festival, and screened at the 2008 Northampton Film Festival.  Ova also screened at The Brattle Theatre on May 3rd, 2009 as part of the annual Mayfair Film Program, and at The Coolidge Corner Theatre from May 15th through June 30th, 2009 as part of a new program called Shorts R Us.  On July 9th and 12th, 2009, Ova screened at The Somerville Theatre as part of Reel Movement, and won the Audience Choice Award for Best Short.

Visit Ova’s IMDb page

Read a recent interview on Beanywood.

Title drawing by David Rosen

Below is a sampling of production stills, showing the set in various stages:

Too Lewd,  1998

Too Lewd is a simple motion test for the doll used in the Ova animation.

And So On,  1997

An experiment in combining more than one type of motion. The first motion is that of the two dolls rolling the globe back and forth. The second motion is the building repetition of the image frame.

Embrace,  1996

This animation was made by capturing short video segments instead of stills.  It combines live-action movement of wind with stop-motion.

Red Set,  1996

The Red Set was built as an exercise in scale model-making.  I had originally planned to choreograph a Busby Berkeley style dance sequence, but I ended up dismantling the set.   The dolls represent characters called Neoscientific Dancers of the Exalted Universe.  I re-worked many of the ideas and materials from this project into my MFA thesis installation the following year.

Neoscientific Dancer II,  1996

This is one of two animations made with the Red Set.  It was made by capturing short video sequences instead of stills.  It’s another simplistic attempt at combining character movement and background motion.

Neoscientific Dancer I,  1996

This was made on the Red Set.  It was shot on b&w super8 film.

Globes,  1995

This is my first animation. It was shot on super8 film, and transferred to video.