The animator's hand

... accidentally captured in a soon-to-be-deleted frame when the director, who was supposed to be activating the camera from the computer using her switch control system, fell asleep on the job and activated her voice switch when she snored too loudly. Oops! We were shooting green screen, using cut out card and acetate circles and rings to create bubbles in a spa pool.    

I was up early, to fit in a bit of cleaning in the utility room before the plumber arrived first thing. Shame and embarrassment are great motivators for cleaning. I also needed to help J finish preparing her contributions for her online Art Talk, on the theme of sport in art. I had a long list of jobs lined up, but after lunch decided I really must take myself in hand, stop making excuses and help her with her animation. Once we've started, I generally quite enjoy it - it's very absorbing, an activity in which it's impossible not to be fully engaged in what one is doing at that moment. What deters me is the setting up, the tripod, the lights, the test shots to sort out exposure and focus; by the time we're ready to start animating, it's often almost time to clear up, and J's room isn't spacious enough to leave everything set up. This time, though, we had the last set of trials as a starting point and managed to animate to shoot about three and a half seconds of bubbles; the large number of pieces which needed to be moved after every frame made it very slow going, but we were reasonably happy with the results.