YouTube battles powered by art and technology David (D.J.) Jordan ’17 has created a cult following — with handmade, stop-motion homages to all things anime and gaming. With more than 9.2 million views and 17,000 subscribers to his YouTube page, Jordan’s PilotTails animations are a labor of love. His 18-minute, 28-second opus Super Saiyans vs. Super Hedgehogs 2, in which action figures from the animated series Dragon Ball Z and Sonic the Hedgehog square off in battle, is composed of 16,620 individual frames (15 per second). When the frames are played quickly in succession, the illusion of movement is created much like a flip book. The special effects in the video were the result of a collaboration with Guilherme Fernandes (a.k.a. Zylladys Live FX), a YouTuber from Brazil. “It’s really learn as you go,” said Jordan, who first started experimenting with stop-motion photography as a Prep for Prep high school student in his dorm room at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. He has steadily improved his technique with each production, using ever-more sophisticated camera equipment, digital effects, and specialized software called DragonFrame. “It’s all geeky stuff, but I’m not ashamed about it. Now, a lot more polish goes into the animation. It’s not just knowing how figures work, but how motion works with momentum and the things you don’t see with the naked eye,” Jordan said, adding that his classroom experience with Wenhua Shi, assistant professor of art and art history, has helped improve the quality of his work. After new 3D printers were installed in Case Library last year, Jordan began designing and printing out individual action figure parts to assemble into a fully articulated model of Samus Aran, heroine of the Metroid video game series, which he used in a screen test battle with a 3D-printed Link from Zelda. Stop motion isn’t new. The original 1933 King Kong was animated in large part thanks to the technique, and Ray Harryhausen’s creations in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1983) made the effect world famous. Today, films like Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and the claymation of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep continue the stopmotion tradition. With two influential internships now under his belt — one at the New York City architecture firm Diller Scofidio and Renfro, and another with The Foundation Center, a nonprofit organization where he helped develop computer animations — Jordan said he clearly sees how he may apply his skills to a career after college, working in either animation or architecture. “I found a similar level of creativity and control with architecture,” said the studio art major. “It’s a concept-to-form idea that I also see in animation. Maybe that will be a more feasible extension of the things I like to do.”
NUTS! tells the outlandish story of John Romulus Brinkley, who offered a cure for impotence in 1917 by transplanting goat testicles.
Andrew Daddio
Penny Lane goes to Sundance A new documentary film by art and art history professor Penny Lane premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. NUTS! tells the outlandish story of John Romulus Brinkley, who offered a cure for human male impotence in 1917. The New York Times, citing the festival’s lineup guide, reported, “In keeping with a recent trend in documentary filmmaking, nontraditional, sometimes controversial storytelling techniques will be on full display [at Sundance]… . The director Penny Lane, for instance, uses animated re-enactments and ‘one seriously unreliable narrator’ to trace the ‘mostly true’ story of a man who found success selling a goat-testicle impotence cure.” Lane traveled the hemisphere in search of background information for NUTS! Her expeditions — and the film itself — were funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Colgate University Research Council, and a Kickstarter campaign that yielded $80,000. Her previous credits include Our Nixon, a documentary featuring home movies shot by President Richard Nixon’s aides, and The Voyagers, a short film about “two small spacecraft, an epic journey, taking risks, and falling in love — also, Carl Sagan.”
David (D.J.) Jordan ’17 takes a photo of a 3D model he created to test for use in his stop-motion animation projects.
Movie makers and shakers Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. With so many Colgate alumni in the film industry, there’s a chance that a Raider played a role in getting that film on the screen. We bring you three alumni in the film news this fall. Adam Paul ’89 founded and directed the St. Lawrence International Film Festival, held in four cities from October 22 to 25. Spanning the U.S.-Canada border, it was the first festival to be truly international. Held in Canton and Potsdam in New York and Ottawa and Brockville in Ontario,
the festival attracted approximately 1,000 people — no small feat for an inaugural year. The opening gala included a 35thanniversary screening of The Blues Brothers at the Canadian Museum of History, which included a special guest appearance by Dan Aykroyd, the film’s co-creator and one of its stars. The other events featured 25 films (most of which were premieres), seven panels, and eight special screenings. “We presented a world-class event to a region that had never seen anything like it before. Now we’ve got to do it again!” said Paul, who has already begun planning next year’s events. R. Stephen Suettinger ’96 is the director, co-writer, and producer of A Year and Change, an independent feature film by his production company, Pebble Hill Films. It was featured in several 2015 festivals including L.A.'s Dances with Films. Recently acquired by Vision Films, A Year and Change is now available on video-on-demand services such as Amazon and iTunes, as well as DVD. “After nine years of working to get this story told, we’re elated that we finally have the opportunity to get A Year and Change in front of audiences,” Suettinger told IndieWire. The movie tells the story of a vending-machine proprietor who decides to change his life after he falls off a roof during a New Year’s Eve party. Trey Nelson ’98 wrote and directed his first feature film: Lost in the Sun, an action and drama open-road adventure that stars Josh Duhamel. When a young boy’s mother dies, Duhamel’s character offers the boy a ride to his grandmother’s house. The two quickly bond, but the man is a petty crook who soon involves the boy in a string of crimes across the nation. Lost in the Sun was released in theaters and video on demand on November 6. — Meredith Dowling ’17 News and views for the Colgate community
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