On the plus side, I got a short-term animation project doing a 90-second music video as well as a short animated “end tag” for their other videos. I was contacted by some twin brothers that got to know me via the Disney Dream CMO contest I entered last year. They contacted me last week about doing this video for some guys that had a band in the 60’s and are now getting back into the business or something to that effect. Should be a fun little project. I’ll let you know where you can view it when it’s all done!
A couple weeks ago, we decided it was time to get going on our food storage plans. We bought some shelving and commandeered a good chunk of Maddy’s closet. Here’s the end result:
As you can see, not a lot of food in there so far, but it’s a work-in-progress. We’ve got the shelving, and we’ve also updated our 72-hour kits, which are a higher priority:
Now each week when we get groceries, we buy a few things for our food storage 3-month supply, which we’ll eventually be rotating through in our normal food consumption. Once that surplus is established, we’ll be buying some of the more long-term needs, such as rice, flour, etc. I’d say we’ll get cans of wheat, but I still have nightmares of our mom’s food storage…though the empty cans are great for keeping tadpoles in (just be prepared for frogs to take up residence near the house after you dump the tadpoles out your bedroom window).
In other food-related news, we also recently took a trip down to “Many Lands,” a local food store that sells ethnic foods. See, for Valentine’s Day, I got Amanda “The Curry Book,” since she’s been wanting to make some other curry recipes besides our standard “chicken broccoli and rice” dinner. But apparently, we needed REAL curry/curry paste rather than the normal curry powder you find at Wal-Mart.
While we were there, we also picked up some packets for a bunch of different meals: Coconut Curry Chicken, Yellow Curry, Teriyaki Chicken, chow mien, fried rice, etc. We also picked up a pack of those awesome sour candies from Japan, Super Lemons!
We made the Coconut Curry Chicken that night, along with some Jasmine Rice. It was pretty good, but VERY spicy…next time Amanda’s only allowed to use ½ of the seasoning packet!
Needless to say, the kids weren’t particularly enthused by the meal. However, a few days later, we made some honey chicken, beef and broccoli, fried rice and jasmine rice and had our own version of a Chinese Buffet (and invited Judy over to join us) and the kids liked that stuff a lot more.
On Tuesday, March 3, the Watchmen Motion Comic was released on DVD and Blu-Ray. Of course I went out to buy a copy. We stopped at Wal-Mart, figuring it would have the best price, but it was $30 for the Blu-ray. Here’s their lovely display:
So we headed over to Best Buy instead, where I knew from the weekly ad that the Blu-Ray was $26.99. Joel asked if he could watch it, and in response, I read to him the warning on the back of the case:
“Watchmen Motion Comic contains mature content some viewers may not find suitable. Inappropriate for viewers younger than 17.”
I haven’t sat down and watched the whole thing through yet, but I’ve watched a couple of the chapters, and it looks really nice, especially on a nice HDTV with Blu-Ray resolution. I’d been viewing the animation in partially-completed, low-resolution, compressed video on the computer. Seeing it in final form in all its glory was an entirely different experience.
We’ll finish off today with some animation that the kids and I did in the past week or so. One day, Madison was really bored—it was a Saturday and Amanda was at work, and I was busy with things, and she was moping around the house. I suggested we get out our old digital camera and some Play-doh, and let Maddy make a clay animation movie. I gave her a short tutorial on animating the clay bit-by-bit, then I taped the camera to the table and let her loose on it. She did 2 different animations, then Joel also wanted to give it a try. Maddy’s turned out pretty well, especially in the beginnings of her animations. Joel needs a little more patience and some more poses, but I guess for his “ninja movie” the fast action is ok. I was curious to see how I’d do on it, and did a little animation as well…though Play-Doh isn’t really the best material to do articulate animations…So here’s a compilation of our animations, set to music from “Coraline.”
8 comments:
Very cute. What talented kids you have!!
I am not showing that to Gregg, or he will have found a new passion! Congrats on your movie premire!
Great job on the claymation! That was super fun. How did you get the pictures to create a movie, though? Did you do something on your computer to do that with the pictures?
You should have heeded my warning about the popcorn! But we just scooped ours into a bowl anyway. No harm done.
I'm jealous of your food storage shelves. This summer, we want to set up food storage shelves in our garage. We've also been trying to buy a few dollars of food storage each week. We just got a lot of items from Costco, like tissues and soap and such. Don't forget toiletries in your "food" storage! Anyway, we got our 72-hour kit together when we moved to Indiana because I freaked out that there would be a tornado or flood or some other terrible Indiana natural disaster. It's so comforting to know we have something in case chaos ensues in the near future.
Curry, curry, curry. I have a recipe for a good curry soup! Are you surprised?
dentu: Japanese word for dent, right Reed?
Yes, I took the photos of the clay and laid them out in my video editing software as frames and set the video to be like 10 frames per second or something.
Well, the problem is, our microwave wasn't the most sanitary at that moment, as you can see in the picture...it tasted good, though, like real corn...also, the jasmine rice tasted like that popcorn, too...weird...
Not surprised about the soup thing--you're a soup nazi.
evere: Middle English form of every. Also the Old English form of ever.
Yeah, we'll have toiletries in there--got TP in our 72 hr kit.
I love curry! I also miss the Many Lands store when we lived there we went quite often. Food storage is so important and I am so glad that you guys are getting that in order. We have found that out the hard way with Adam having lost his job. Luckily we do have a three month supply!! Love the clay animation. What creative kids you have!!!
Awesome claymation. My new favorite super simple asian-ish recipe: 1 can coconut milk, 1 can kidney beans and some rice. Drain the beans, heat them through, add the rice and milk and cook like normal rice (20 mins covered on low heat) and then eat. I'm sure your wife can come up with an awesome spice for it, but it is pretty tasty as is.
Andy, your family is getting so adventurous with food! I would never have expected you to try a) new things or b) anything exotic. Good for you!!!
revolu is a revolution that ends before it's over.
Ha ha, Mom did a witty one!
Aren't you so glad Watchmen is over and you can now watch the result? We'll have to see it at some point, though we don't have Blu-Ray yet.
Those were good claymations!
bashimb = short for 'bashimbo' - a dance popular in many BYU FHE groups. It's really goofy, of course.
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