35. Signals

How ideas come at inconvenient times. Pages from the sketchbook, beginnings of a style primer, saying goodbye to summer. Chamoe goes to London.

Photo of a bedroom, 3 am.

In the intervening years she has learned to understand night as the place in which truth is revealed; as the opposite to day, the dissimulator.
—Rachel Cusk

Hey,

It’s 9 am on the first official day of fall as I’m starting to write this. I’m in Harlem now, diving into work.

It’s been raining; the storm will continue for the next 12 hours. After a run of oppressive heat, the cool air is a relief. I love kicking off the week this way, with every window open to a heavy, cocooning downpour.

This is what it sounds like:

Last night I got a string of images in my head,

as if someone decided to radio a bunch of stuff over. This happens now and again when I’m trying to fall asleep, my brain going into overdrive because I’m finally relaxed.

Getting a deluge of pictures like this, both still and on loop, is my equivalent of the inspired shower. They come in waves, one after the other. It’s soothing, and sets me in a dreamlike state.

When this happens I feel a pull to go completely under. But there’s another part of me that struggles to stay awake, capture the signals. The problem is that if I give in to transcribing or recording the pictures as they come, it’ll soon be 4 am and I‘ll have lost the night (and the following day); I know how it goes.

Most of the time I choose sleep, because I’m weak lol, and as I drift off, feverishly repeating mnemonics to myself, I think: these are so good there’s no way I’ll forget! But of course by next morning, I remember next to nothing.

I’ve tried having an audio recorder on standby so that I can speak into the dark, sleepily, but I can never get it to trigger consistently. Speaking also seems to degrade images more than transcribing. Until I have a better idea I’ll continue with the Notes app which has dark mode; that seems least intrusive to both my circadian rhythm and the signals I’m receiving.

Anyway, last night I chose sleep again and don’t remember anything other than the vestige of a single picture:

a girl in a blue frame,

arms crossed, high hair, looking off into the distance. Rain, resentful mouth. Eventually turning away, to her left. On loop.

The framing, and the angle of the face, was the toughest to recall. How tight was the shot? A bunch of chicken-scratch in the morning to try and remember:

Random idea in the process—parts of a face turning asynchronously:

I think I finally got close to what I saw, with the frame fairly tight around the face:

I’ll reference these as I continue to explore ideas for my next animated short film. Speaking of which,

I made some progress on the style front

for the latest vignette I’ve been noodling on.

These are starting to feel like the beginnings of a style primer, which will set structure and guidelines for color, texture, and how I use line work.

Renderings for Day:

GIFs — hopefully they’ve loaded by now:

Also, Chamoe’s going to London!

It screens opening night for Little Wing, a UK festival that spotlights emerging filmmakers. Online and in-person tickets available now.

They haven’t shared the 2022 jury yet, but last year’s included a director of photography for Game of Thrones, a Picture Editor for Wandavison and The Boys, an editor for Peaky Blinders, a BAFTA winner, and a film critic at Vulture and IndieWire 😻

And last weekend, I shared my first rumination, a visual love letter to Louis Feuillade’s classic 1915 silent serial Les Vampires. Take a look if you haven’t yet.

I hope you’re well, wherever you are.

Until next time.