About "Le tableau" via Animafest - Letterbox Reviews:
Award-winning Canadian animator and illustrator Michèle Lemieux plunges you into the fascinating technique of pinscreen animation. Join her as she traces the history of this tool, from its invention in the 1930s by Alexandre Alexeïeff and his wife Claire Parker, [to animated films by Jacques Drouin (1943-2021) (Article on him, and his impact on animation, featuring his short films using the pinscreen!)], to its most recent use in Lemieux’s film "Le tableau"(The Painting), which screened in competition at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
A short film made using pinscreen animation, The Painting explores the 1652 portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria by Velázquez. Michèle Lemieux demonstrates incredible mastery of the pinscreen, playing with shadow and light to evoke the tragic fate of Mariana, who was married to her uncle at the age of 14. Both painful and tender, this experimental work is a poem of a film: a meditation on the brutality of institutionalized incest and art’s power to capture the soul.
This is really cool! I've played with the lower-fidelity tables you often see in science museums and the like, but this is a whole other level. And beautiful artwork as well. I see Lemieux has a...
This is really cool! I've played with the lower-fidelity tables you often see in science museums and the like, but this is a whole other level. And beautiful artwork as well.
I see Lemieux has a digital workflow with her computer beside the pinscreen. Nice evolution of the old analog techniques her predecessors used. It got me thinking about what other ways this contraption could be adapted. Imagine if the precise position of each pin could be recorded and restored later by a mechanical layer behind the screen. Instead of taking a photograph of each animation frame, the screen itself could display n frames a second. I bet the motion of the pins between each state would be mesmerizing.
I was also imagining if the black pins could be upgraded (somehow) to dynamically change colors and translucency. Picture each pin as a transparent outer sheath with concentric RGB cylinders inside it that can be independently controlled. This could create some fantastically vibrant effects, I bet it would look almost like watercolor. Of course the magic of the current pinscreen is that the artist can physically "paint" directly on it with a variety of tactile methods. Even with a high-tech makeover like this it would be important to preserve that ability. Maybe the colors could be controlled by a special motion-tracking instrument that signals the changes like making brush strokes.
That would probably be outrageously expensive to build but it would be so cool.
About "Le tableau" via Animafest - Letterbox Reviews:
This is really cool! I've played with the lower-fidelity tables you often see in science museums and the like, but this is a whole other level. And beautiful artwork as well.
I see Lemieux has a digital workflow with her computer beside the pinscreen. Nice evolution of the old analog techniques her predecessors used. It got me thinking about what other ways this contraption could be adapted. Imagine if the precise position of each pin could be recorded and restored later by a mechanical layer behind the screen. Instead of taking a photograph of each animation frame, the screen itself could display n frames a second. I bet the motion of the pins between each state would be mesmerizing.
I was also imagining if the black pins could be upgraded (somehow) to dynamically change colors and translucency. Picture each pin as a transparent outer sheath with concentric RGB cylinders inside it that can be independently controlled. This could create some fantastically vibrant effects, I bet it would look almost like watercolor. Of course the magic of the current pinscreen is that the artist can physically "paint" directly on it with a variety of tactile methods. Even with a high-tech makeover like this it would be important to preserve that ability. Maybe the colors could be controlled by a special motion-tracking instrument that signals the changes like making brush strokes.
That would probably be outrageously expensive to build but it would be so cool.