Had to dispatch this poor guy at work. Got hit by a car and broke both front legs. He will not go to waste though! I dropped him off at the processor and kept his head.
To better understand why museums collect specimens, instead of purely relying on salvaged specimens, Emily Graslie makes a very clear argument and important points!
Where’d you get all those dead animals? (by thebrainscoop)
Vulture Wisdom (2020) written, illustrated, and arranged by yours truly. Written for beginner vultures, this is a practical primer on bone collection as a hobby and addresses the hows and whys of sourcing animal bones from found remains.
I’m not as active as I used to be on this platform, and this booklet is available by direct inquiry only - if you’re interested in getting a copy for yourself (or a friend) your best bet is to message me on instagram @s.hirsack
Hello everyone!! What a minute it’s been since I’ve been on here!! I have been so busy with life. I ended up in a mental health facility for a bit to get myself better. I feel great, got engaged last weekend, and have been doing more vulture culture stuff.
Pictured is a litter of opossum Joey’s and an older joey!
Had to dispatch this poor guy at work. Got hit by a car and broke both front legs. He will not go to waste though! I dropped him off at the processor and kept his head.
My friend has this phone case with coyboy images on it including an Appaloosa horse, and as soon as I saw it I said “I saw that horse in France 19 years ago” and sure enough it was Paulus Potter’s oil painting “The Piebald Horse” that I had seen in a French Museum, but made monochrome.
Point is I never forget an ungulate and I immediately recognized that deer as this:
Animated shots I did for my 2019 student film “Red Earth”. I’m more comfortable doing small movements and subtle expressions, as you can see from the numerous frames of not much going on.
Our lead animator Tonia did the heavy lifting with the more action-orientated shots as well as the fire (literal powerhouse animator, go follow her on Instagram @toniaciccone_art).
The film itself is about a Wallaby witnessing the birth of a bushfire while looking for water/food during a severe drought, or as the logline puts it:
“A monster born from the climate crisis rains down the fires of hell upon an innocent wallaby.”
Average fun stuff. I made it in response to Australia’s complete disregard to environmental policy and its climate-denying, coal-loving culture. Surprise surprise we had one of the worst bushfires in our country’s history soon afterwards due to longer dry seasons and government incompetence (I could rant all day about it but moving on).
Initial concepts for the projects. That last one was a Bob Ross painting exercise but I made it into concept art to get the point of dread across for the class. The idea for the art direction was to get the innocence of Winnie the Pooh’s plush-like animals and contrast it with the negative themes of the story blah blah blah.
I’d upload my initial storyboards for the film here as well but we (as in I) lost them after a file purge of the project’s g-drive to make more room for animation files. Thought we had all of our files backed up prior to mass deletion (we didn’t). We still have Tonia’s refined boards however which is nice.
Anyway below are the beat boards I did during development + bonus Hero Image.
Because of Covid-19 a lot of festivals that Red Earth was submitted to were either cancelled or postponed, and the relevance of the Australian Bushfires dwindling in the public consciousness made Red Earth sort of forgotten pretty quickly. Still, I’m happy we made it and it gives us all good portfolio material.
The dialogue is complete shit but it gets the point across and the animation/visuals are what really matters for us at the end of the day.
New Media Film Festival was one of the few festivals to pick it up and they currently have it on full display on their youtube channel. It’ll be a while before I can fully release it on my personal vimeo so if you got 3 minutes to spare have a watch below.
Trigger warning for dead animals and general environmental existentialism.
