Inflation Animations for the Washington Post

If inflation were a helium-filled balloon, we'd be pretty high up in the air right now. That's the premise behind the animations that art director Emily Wright of the Washington Post commissioned from me for an interactive piece titled Inflation Explained: How Prices Took Off by Damian Paletta. As you scroll through, six stop-motion videos automatically play behind Damian's words, giving an informative and playful picture of the ups and downs of the economy since early 2020. 

This project was a blast to work on, and a terrific challenge with all the air physics involved, plus a tight deadline.

You can read more about how this piece came together from the Post's persepctive in this "Behind the Story" piece. And see all six animations from it in this Instagram post. 

Happy Year of the Tiger

via GIPHY

WOW this year started out on a sour note (thanks, Omicron), but tigers are sure to prevail! 

This website may have been a little bit quiet over the past year, but I've got some exciting stuff going on behind the scenes. Namely, a picture book! And a whole animated series! That plus designing and teaching has been keeping me busy. I plan to keep makign GIFs becuase they just make me so happy, and I need to compile all that I made in 2021 and share here soon.

I hope 2022 has many more good things in store for us all! 

Goodnight, Mice

via GIPHY

Merry Christmas! 

Sweet Tusk selected for 2021 Chicago International Children's Film Festival

I love this festival news becuase it's in Chicago and so am I! 

Sweet Tusk, my short about two walruses bonding over dental hygiene, was selected for the 2021 Chicago International Children's Film Festival. The festival will be held mostly online—see more details at the festival website. 

Sophie and Chanel selected for Animafest Zagreb

I’m honored that my 2020 short film, Sophie and Chanel at Home, was just selected for screening at Animafest Zagreb 2021, the animation festival in Zagreb, Croatia! It will be screened in the Films for Children competition, and this year that screening will happen in person, which makes me so happy. If I lived on the same continent, I would be trying to get there in person! If you happen to live in the area, check it out June 7-12. 

Holiday animations for Nick Jr social accounts

Nick Jr. asked me to make some animations for their holiday greetings on social media! Seen here are my knit versions of charcters from Blue's Clues and You, PAW Patrol, and Bubble Guppies. This was such a fun project with which to end a mostly disappointing year. Happy Holidays! 

NIFTY Making-Of Video

NIFTY invited me to make some new cat GIFs for them and share my process, and this video is the result! I loved the opportunity to share some behind-the-scenes footage (featuring my super messy basement studio!) and KNIT MORE CATS. Thank you NIFTY!

GIPHY's Top Ten (again!)

via GIPHY

This was a nice surprise: GIPHY has included my OK! GIF at number 6 in their list of “Top GIFs of 2020”! 

I guess many of us have been working toward various forms of OK-ness this year. 

I'm so grateful to have this weird little medium in which my characters can help express ideas and feelings.

Btw, this is the SECOND time one of my GIFs has made it into GIPHY’s year-end top ten 🤯 In 2017 my heart-knitting gnome was number 1!

Stay inside, scaredy cat!

via GIPHY

Happy Halloween! 

Greetings from Mochimochi 10 year anniversary

Greetings from Mochimochi was ten years ago this month! 

In fall 2010 I brought Mochimochi Land into the real life for the first time at gallery hanahou in NYC. Putting together Greetings from Mochimochi got me exploring a big interconnected world of knitted weirdness, and my subsequent installations at venues like Vogue Knitting LIVE and Everyday Mooonday were based on this first one. And it had a working model train!

I couldn’t be more grateful to KOKO Art Agency for making this magic happen and helping inspire so much Mochimochi Land fun in the past ten years. 

You can see more photos from this show here.