The Vanquishing « Myriapod Journal

Santa’s Workshop

By Jessica, on February 24th, 2012%

New elves join the ranks!
Sam Colon on the left and Alex Bader on the right. (And trusty Anthony there in the middle.)
They are all busy busy busy prepping illustrations for the very beginnings of our fairy tale animation for The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga!

In the Studio Part II

By Jessica, on November 3rd, 2011%

Alright, as promised, a few snippets from what we have been working on.
These shots are really about the process we have been developing. I will post more revealing images when we have a full sample…

Paint Samples

These are all of our story-boards. This wall is the summation of the entire story!

From left: Michelle playing with 3-D layers, Rachael annotating the script, Devin sketching

In the Studio

By Jessica, on November 2nd, 2011%

The team behind the animated fairy tale portion of my film, The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga, is growing. Michelle Enemark as animator and Devin Dobrowolski as illustrator are both incredibly talented artists that I am so excited to be working with.

This week Michelle, Rachael and I all convened at Devin’s studio to map out the animation. We have spent several intense days planning, testing, and story-boarding the story from start to finish.

I’m posting a few pictures of us at work, but tune-in tomorrow for some sneak-peaks of Devin’s sketches.

Devin and Jessica discuss layout

Michelle running tests on layers and images

Rachael annotates the fairy tale narration

Devin is assisted by our intern Noreen who joined us for a few hours today

Vanquishing, meet Lapland

By Jessica, on September 15th, 2011%

While out hiking, Raisa and I stumbled on a field of fly agarics. I couldn’t help getting down on my stomach in the mud to take a few pictures.

Wonderland

By Jessica, on August 23rd, 2011%

These photos are from an amazing little book from Jason Eskenazi called Wonderland: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith.

Wedding, Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine, 1999

I am absolutely mesmerized by some of his images. I can only hope that my film, The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga, will capture even a fragment of this atmosphere.

Army Base, Karagandar, Kazakhstan, 1998

Harvest, Mariel Republic, Russia, 1999

Heroin Addicts, Lvov, Ukraine, 2000

Sleeping Couple, Kirov Region, 2000

Cinereach!

By Jessica, on April 7th, 2011%

Just back from an exceptional three weeks at the MacDowell Colony, to find this incredibly good news waiting for me. A giant and unwieldy thank you to everyone at Cinereach for selecting my work-in-progress, The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga as one of the thirteen recipients of the Winter Grant cycle.
This is a major step towards completing this project and a monstrous ego-boost as well.
With the support of Cinereach my team and I will be diving into illustration, animation and music composition…
We can’t wait!

THANK YOU!
And congratulations to the other dozen projects that were selected!

A still from The Vanquishing

On Japan and the coming weeks

By Jessica, on March 15th, 2011%

It has been good to hear from all our friends in Japan, but it makes it that much more difficult to imagine the desperation and shock there. As we can now see, the repercussions of this earthquake could be much more dramatic than was first revealed.

To give, text REDCROSS to 90999 for a $10 donation.

On a completely different note, I will be spending the next three weeks working on The Vanquishing at The MacDowell Colony. It is a tremendous honor to have been selected as a resident.
Check out the cabin where I will be working.