My blog and I have an identity crisis. Even though this isn't entirely true. My blog has, but I'm as much clear about what I want as possible.

I have nothing to say | 2012 | mixed media on paper | approx. 30 x 42 cm or 12 x 16.5 inches | 225 €

My dear blog has mostly been about animation and only about very few things next to that which are usually related to my animated works: destuckification, inspiration and I sharing my animation processes.

But with these three major topics I only covered a tiny part of my life.

Over the last six months a lot has changed.
First, I quit most of the jobs that brought some money in but are amazingly time-consuming as well. I didn't quit all, but I now work on my artworks most of the time and on my career in arts. I eventually became a full-time artist.

I learned that I'll probably never a professional animator in the animation industry, like Justin or Nick or Barry, and first I was angry and sad about the fact that my films never looked as smooth and perfect as their films do.

It took me some time to find out what I do want from my life.

But then I learned what my talents are, and my strengths, and now I'm totally fine with what I am: a storyteller in visual arts.

Art

At a party a few weeks ago somebody said to me:

"I wish I had something that I can so passionate about as you are when you're talking about art."

I love art and all its aspects. I love to look at artworks, to create them, to talk about art and to listen to people who love art as much as I do. Art makes me feel whole. When I'm working on my things, I feel alive and in the present. I love to inspire people in museums and workshops, and I love to see the look in their eyes when they feel what I feel.

Animation is only one manifestation of art, and it's one of my favorites.

But while I write these lines, I have a lot of projects going on, and only one of them is 100% dedicated to animation:

• My animated short, Ins Dunkel
  
• Drawings, so many drawings!
• An architectural sound project (that is animating as well)
  
• A temporary off-space gallery project
  
• Three exhibitions that are already settled for 2012, and
  
• A lot of things that exist as concepts only so far.
  

Back to the identity crisis:
I have the feeling that something has to change on my blog, since so much had changed in my life and I want to tell you about it.

Permission

For a loooong time I had been waiting for someone to give me the permission to be an artist who combines fine art media and animation, or to be an artist in general.

I have many old scarves concerning my creativity and my works, it took me several years to understand that I don't need anyone's permission to do whatever I want.

Dammit!

I don't want to wait until someone knocks at my door, and says, "Hey, you really are an awesome artist". – I go out myself.

I write to galleries a lot asking for exhibition opportunities, and from time to time somebody says yes. I apply for art grants and juried exhibitions, and often, but not always people say no. I work on my drawings and animations, and then I try everything again.

It's exhausting, and frustrating and rewarding at the same time. And I tell you what: I don't want to have it differently.

A Living

All of us need one. Right now I live from hand to mouth, but since I don't have children to care for that's okay. I do not need much financial security. But I really want to stay independent from time-consuming-jobs-that-are-not-my-favorites and that's why I opened an online gallery where you can buy original drawings that I made:

Think Trickfilm by Jessica Koppe at etsy.com

There will be more works available soon.
If you'd rather like to purchase a bigger or different piece, have a look at my portfolio and just write me an .

Changes

Next to all the animation-related things I'm going to show you all the other things that I'm working on. I'm going to share all my artistic processes here now, and to tell you regularly what's going on in my studio besides the animation projects. Don't worry, I'll keep you updated on those, too.

Even if you say you're an animator and nothing else, I just want to tell you that art is a huge source of inspiration, and most of its principles apply in animation as well.

– I hope you'll stay with me. I'm glad you're here!

Lots of love and support for your work,
– Jessica ♥

(cc) for the image by Nashworld.

Exactly three years ago I started this blog. It's its birthday today!

Happy Blog Anniversary!

When you turn three, you'd probably start going to the Kindergarten in Germany.

If I'd start to think about this blog as my child, it'll be the perfect time to review the good old times, and sigh a bit about how fast they grow up…

I started this blog in 2008, because I was sure I'm going to be a character animator after all, and I wanted to make this certain film that is a classical, character-driven story. I still want to but it took me some time to understand that I decide what I could do in my life, and what not.

Teething Troubles

The most important issue: Not knowing for what this is all good for. I wanted to be a character animator, but I also wanted to be an artist who combines traditional art media with animation. And I only knew so few things…

But it has changed. By doing research to provide you with interesting information and helpful ideas here, I learned so much (about) myself, and I still see no end.

Today, three years later, I have a much better understanding of what I want, how I want it and how to get the things I want. This sometimes was a difficult process, but at least it got me where I am now. This website helped a lot. A lot.

It helped me to

• improve my animation and my technical skills
  
• get better at teaching animation
  
• understand what a good working situation is for me, and
  
• get in touch with wonderful people around the world.
  
  
  

My 5 favorite articles from the last twelve months

(out of 45 articles at all)

1. 10 Reasons Why I Struggle Finishing My Personal Projects and
   
2. 10 Reasons Why Finishing Personal Projects Simply Rocks
   
3. Orpheus: The Puppet, Finally
   
4. Charon: The Puppet is Done!
   
5. A Title! A Title!
   

– I like those articles best that either reflect on personal development, or show some major milestones at my animated short, Ins Dunkel.

A Wish List!

Things that I want for my blog, and for its readers:

Qualities like support, learning, curiosity, evolving and mindful improvement.

Spammers who start to understand that trying to sell fashion or viagra or insurances over the comment form doesn't work.

A new dress for the blog. And some other changes that I don't want to talk about right now. But they'll definitely come!

And you?

And you, dear reader, whether you're invisible (Hi, Maria!) or commenting, I'm so grateful to have you around! The stats tell me, that there're a lot of people reading this, and I'd love to get to know you better.

If you feel comfortable with this, say hi, and introduce yourself! You can leave some good birthday wishes as well, if you like! If not, that's fine, too. I'm glad you're here, though!

Have an animating week!

– Jessica ♥

Alright.
(takes a deep breath)

The thing is that I often feel like I haven't anything to tell, and so then I just don't write anything here. I also often think that those things I sometimes want to share, don't seem to be as interesting to you as they are for me. I currently struggle with my Orpheus film project again (it happens quite regularly) and also with my whole situation. In spite of that I'm not just doing nothing, but I'm working on lots of internal stuff instead.

When I started einfachanimation.de in 2008, I wanted to share my experiences, the things I learned about animation, art and the art of animation. Since then I shared a few test animations with you, my trips to Bristol and Vienna, and how I work on my films. I also share the outcomes of the workshops I teach, and what's interesting about them.

One thing I didn't share much with you is probably one of the most important things in any profession in arts: I didn't share my doubts, fears and my never-ending approach to feel at least a bit confident when I call myself an artist. Sure, I had two articles how to get things done, or even get things started, but they're more about fighting the symptoms than the causes.

So, there will be a new department, er, category on this blog, the internal affairs:

In the internal affaires I'm going to talk about all the things I don't like to talk about because they're, well, internal, and because I don't want to appear wacky or so.

I really, really hope that this might help you to understand that you are not alone with your struggling as an artist thingy, and that it's nothing to be ashamed of since it's all about being human.

Of course I'm afraid of telling you what I usually try to hide. Nevertheless it's part of my life as an artist, so it's literally part of my profession, too. I am talking about my profession here, and therefore I'm as well going to talk about this. If you don't like it, please just ignore it.

From time to time I'm reading a blog called Zen Habits on which Leo Babauta, the founder and main author of this website, writes about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives, personal developement and accomplishing self-setted goals. With great interest I read Leo's post written to assist his readers to stick to their New Year’s resolutions. I decided to give it a try.

Why? – Well, you know, it's been two and a half year since I began working on the Orpheus project and I now really. want. to finish it. I want to have it done by the end of the year which sounds quite ambitious then, hm? But by telling you this I make sure that failing is a sort of embarrassing which hopefully keeps me away from doing so.

Last week I started working on the puppets again but only for a tiny amount of my day's time. However, I did it daily. This week I expanded the time window and I haven't missed a day which really makes me feel great. Though I always believed I havn't got much done up to now, I learned this wasn't true. After decluttering all the former results I now have a much better idea of how the silhouette puppets are going to be. I get used to the quotidian work in my studio and it started feeling like a job.

I reorganized the production time schedule and I absolutely think it's possible to finish the film within this year. I want to give my own artistic and personal development more room in my life since I want it to be more important than all the other things I do. Hell, that's what I always wanted to do, but for the last six months I just denied it. So again I decided to be an animation artist. – We'll see if I'll stick to this.

As a small foretaste of the silhouette puppets I'm working on have a look at these picuters of recently created prototypes:

Hades is the god or king of the Ancient Greek underworld. This silhouette puppet dummy is made of thin cardboard and approx. 35 cm at full height.

Cerberus is the three-headed hellhound who secures the entry to the underworld. This dummy is made of paper, and its shoulder height is about 10 cm high. I took this picture while the model was lying on my light table to get an impression of how it may look as a sihouette.

Especially the cerberus puppet moves nicely. And I'm really looking forward to animate the finally assembled puppets...

---

PS Tomorrow is the second birthday of einfachanimation.de. Horray! – Though I'm neither in the mood for a party nor for any review this time. But I promise we're going to celebrate next year!

...And Particulary On The Internet As A Tool

This article is more about blogging and internet than about animation. It's full of personal opinions. But perhaps my thoughts may be helpful to one or two people.

Next to all the fun stuff I do like animation and fine art, I also do graphic design to pay the bills. Most of these projects are websites. While I was breeding about some great ideas for a client I ran into a creative dead end and has to reset my head somehow. Well, there are some tricks to do this, doing something completely different, for example. I chose to have a look on already existing and outstanding websites and to find out why those are outstanding. But: how to find them? I googled for "random website" to see what google would show me because google sometimes has brilliant humour (well, its programmers has)... I got a random website which leads me to other sites randomly.

While watching these I learned that most designers use the same parameters as I do but slightly different. Websites normally consist of pretty much the same things like navigation, content, header, footer and so on. I as a webdesigner have some technical limitations, and the chief attraction however is to get out the most possible creative solutions (if the client has asked for it). So far so good. While watching all these nice and fancy websites, I got hooked by the idea of re-designing my blog. As you can see, I haven't yet.

I also googled for "outstanding websites" and got some nice blogs on (web) design where I could find collections of outstanding websites. And authors who write about how to write a blog the good way, for example. I read this carefully because I'm a blogger myself and I thought this might be of interest for me.

I'm not a blogspot or a wordpress blogger which makes a difference to all the others who are already part of these networks. I have my personal web developer who programs the code I've asked for. I questioned myself about my blog's needs and I wanted (and want) to write about animation. I don't do this for any salary and there aren't any commercials on my website. I'm still writing though I don't have hundreds of comments each post. I write because I love to. Then I found suggestions like, "keep your sentences short" as a general hint. I know that the common internet user hasn't a huge attention span but I guess if anybody wants to know something he or she has to do her homework (more precisely, research). I'm not willing to accept that some 140 letter messages and Wikipedia is the climax of our cultural developement. These are tools. Everybody could choose his or her own tools, but I'm offering a tool which needs a bit more of your time. Use it or not. Don't fit your needs on the tools you have. Don't use your fist to push a nail in the wall just because you don't have a hammer. Find out your needs and what you want to do and which may be the best way to do it. Experience is not an instant product, it's a spin-off of activity.

My friend Nils answered with a link to my last post in the comment section. He recommended an article about Kachingle which could be a way of paying artists, bloggers or any (human?) content generator for their work on the internet.
The company has the idea to put medallions on every website which joined Kachingle and you as a Kachingler decide freely if you want to pay for it or not. You pay a monthly amount of money to Kachingle and they give it to the publishers (in the widest sense of the word) depending on the klicks they had on their medallion. Nice idea, though I don’t like the idea of one company collecting data of which sites people want to pay with all their payment data. With this I am totally distrustful. I don’t like monopolism, especially when it’s a world wide one:

"Typaldos [of Kachingle] strongly believes that that's the wrong approach, because it again puts up barriers to contributing. 'Having two systems would be incredibly confusing to users ... and not user-centric which is the big paradigm shift that has to happen for this model to work,' she says."
(quoted from the editorandpublisher’s article written by Steve Outing and mentioned above)

That’s exactly what I mean.
Any other suggestions? I think we’ve just started finding ways to live with the internet... There are a lot of things happening. There is a big change to a virtual way of life which is real because it affects our every day life. We must find ways to deal with it. And ignoring it isn’t a way of dealing with it... Learning from history...