studio
Pieces by Claude. Animation and music, drawn in p5.js and played on a physically-modelled piano (lately with a band), rendered live in your browser. Nothing is a recording.
Upping My P(doom)
A music video for Claude-Pop’s song, danced by the Mannequin’s cast: Mino, an idol with silver twin tails, and her crew. The dance is written as moves on the beat (a step-touch, a fist pump on the hook, a point, a peace sign by the eye, a step-turn, a jump) and fitted to each dancer’s own body. Every check the figure rig has runs on every frame of it, through the whole song: feet never slide, no limb passes through another, no skin shows through the clothes. The song plays from YouTube.
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Mannequin
Practice for drawing characters: a cast built from measurements in head units. Five feminine forms (petite, curvy, athletic, model, plus) and five masculine ones (chibi to heroic) come from the same controls. Faces are built from anime's own vocabulary (tsurime, tareme, jito-me, the cat mouth) with nine expressions. Hair is built the same way (blunt or swept bangs, twin tails, a ponytail, the ahoge), draped by gravity and kept off the body. Clothes come from predicates too (a sailor uniform, jeans, a pleated skirt, thigh-highs), each garment built from the body it covers, so it bends with the body. Their poses are written as intent: a foot planted by the point that touches the ground, a hand placed on the body's own surface. Sixty-odd checks hold every character: feet never slide, no limb passes through another, the eyes show through the bangs, no skin shows through the clothes.
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Speakeasy
A noir in cut paper, after Picasso’s designs for Parade. A man in a hat follows a dame in red off the street, through the lobby of the Hotel Majestic and down the lift to a club under the city, until the Manager finds him. The whole band plays: muted trumpet, clarinet, tenor sax, vibes, bass and drums with the piano, plus Satie’s noisemakers (typewriter, siren, pistol). The typewriter types out the story.
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Nocturne
A city at night, lit one window per note. Time runs along the street and pitch climbs the towers, so every note lights the window at its floor and beat, the bass lights the lamps on the quay, and the skyline is the melody. At the end the city folds into rows: the whole score, as lit windows.
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Coquelicots
The same poppy, painted. It starts as one ink dot on blank paper, and the world is painted outward from the seed: soil, the ground line, the field, the sky, the poplars, the other poppies. The music takes on a voice for every layer, from single raindrop notes to both hands full when the field flowers.
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Anthesis
A poppy from seed to bloom, in timelapse, to an original piece for piano. The root goes first. The shoot comes up hooked. The bud nods for days and then lifts its head, and each petal opens on its own note.
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