Dive Into the Leaves
An autumn animation collection
When nature is over performing, it’s hard not to want to participate, to harvest the beauty and find a way to collaborate with it. It feels like it has been an abnormally long and beautiful fall here in Colorado. The leaves have held on longer than previous years and the colors have put up a valiant resistance against the inevitable brittling brown. As autumn comes to an end, I want to share some of my recent creations.
When the leaves began to ripen I selected specimens to bring back to my studio. I used a light box as a back light and experimented with building animations. This is what it looked like sitting in my pajamas playing with leaves:
Although the moth version got the most views I am not sure it is the best of the bunch. What do you think?
With indoor success I decided to take my technique outside. This worked out better than I expected, even in windy conditions. While the algorithm didn’t bless the result, I think it was my best video of the series, showing the outdoor experience in all its gusty glory.
As a final experiment, I wanted to try something that didn’t involve stickers. For this, I held 35mm slides in front of the trees and let the colors show through. It looked like this:
At this point I thought my fall adventures were complete, but in a final gift, autumn blessed Colorado with the Northern Lights and I once again found myself outside looking to collaborate with the trees. The result is the image below created from 35mm slides projected onto a tree, backlit by the aurora borealis. I did this on 4 other trees (director’s cut version here) before my fingers couldn’t withstand the cold.
For those curious about the tool I made to pull this off, here is a post showing what my projector looks like. This technique feels promising and will probably spark new ideas as fall turns to winter.
I hope you liked these animations and enjoyed the beauty of the fall season as much as I have. Stay creative.
Your friend,
Ade
"Sitting in my pajamas playing with leaves" is a great first line to a poem.