Ezra Comes to Life

This year, we are going to be going through the books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther on Sunday mornings in our Student Bible classes. I came up with the idea to create some short videos to lead some, if not all, of the lessons. I thought I could use some small sets and do a little stop motion animation as well as live action with props and figures. Since the first lesson starts in a couple weeks (in fact I had to push it back), I am in full speed mode creating the props, sets and figures. I will be using a GoPro for most of the shooting. After I do the first two or three videos, I am going to be inviting the help of some students and adults to help complete the project.

A side goal of working on this for HP, will be that I will make the curriculum available for purchase for other churches. We are looking at about a 26 week curriculum package with lessons, resources and videos.

Here are some pictures of the process so far...

Concept sketches

 

 

Sculpting process...

I used aluminum foil balled up around the end of a nail. The nail will make it so I can turn the figure's head.

Ezra is beginning to take shape.

Esther will be used later on, but here head and figure are almost complete.

I use a heavy steel wire for the armature. The heads can be removed from the bodies so that I can use them for other characters.

 

Ezra's House:

 



Matt's Monster Madness 2012 Day 5: Thing

As I did in 2008 and 2011, I will be posting a monster of the day during the month of October. There will be a new monster every day. Some may be sketched, some done digitally, some in photo editing, some sculpture, etc...


You can also follow me on Instagram to see the monsters that way too! My username is @mcrosser.

Today is the second one and it's called "Thing". It's photo edited, captured with my Motorola Xoom tablet. Click on the link below to see all the monsters for each year!

Matt's Monster Madness 2012

Matt's Monster Madness 2011

Matt's Monster Madness 2008

All Monster Posts

Italy Mosaic Finished

Here is the final, albeit lower resolution, Italy Mosaic. This is one half of our banner that goes behind our missions table. It is compromised of about 750 pictures, all taken of people, places or things in Verona. I added to my own photos, those taken by Rae Bubp, April Kilgore, Jason Casey and Charles Lawyer. Thanks for helping take pictures everyone!

Photomosiac of Italy

So, I am working on a new banner for the Verona team. I started brainstorming about what to do. On the last banner I made for our Ancona team, I made a collage. It was huge and lots of work, but turned out great. It made for a great discussion starter at our mission table. Well, I thought maybe I could do something a little more ambitious this time with the collage. I could do one of those photomosaics, you know where 500 pictures make up one picture? So, I am planning on taking a 1000 or so shots of Verona and turning them into a picture of Italy with water all around. I have done some tests with a software program I downloaded called, Andreamosaic, and they look really good. Once I am done, I'll post it here too.

Route 66 Photo Book

Well, the Route 66 photo book is finished. I didn't have time to do any original artwork. It includes only the photography that Angie and I took while taking our two trips down the old path. In a future edition I will add some original artwork based on Route 66 highlights, as well as add more shots from the front half of the trip (Chicago to Claremoore, Oklahoma). If you are interested it is available at Lulu.com by clicking here (http://stores.lulu.com/mcrosser).

New Photo Book

For our ministry we had to travel across the country in the beginning of 2006. On two trips we actually loosely followed the path of Route 66. First from Tulsa to California, then from Chicago to Tulsa. Since we had to go those directions anyway, we decided to have fun with it. We got travel books about Route 66 and stopped and took pictures of many notable sites along the way. We saw leaning towers, ghost towns, the largest cross this side of the Mississippi and many other things. I am currently working on a photo book that compiles many of our best pictures. I will also toss in some original artwork based on some of the sites we saw. Hopefully, it will be done at the end of this month.