It's been a while between updates, but animating has been continuing steadily. The end is within reach, with only seven shots remaining to be animated! One more on board the ship, and a handful in the upcoming garden set.

- Jim

We've been busy here in the I Have Your Heart studios! Everything is powering along and it's a wonderful to see so much progress. We've completed animation on a lot of shots now, including some of the trickiest scenes in the film.

There's a new blog post up at www.ihaveyourheart.com with lots of photos of the production, introduction to our team of wonderful assistants, even some timelapse...

We've also been making new animation friends, with legendary animator Anthony Lucas, creator of the Oscar-nominated film Jasper Morello, coming to visit the set. He liked our work which was exciting, and gave us some invaluable tips from his wealth of experience.

Here's a photo of one of our  careful crafted fancy puppets, waiting for her moment on the new dockyard set that we're currently constructing.

In the meantime, the other two members of the team Molly Crabapple and Kim Boekbinder, have once more combined forces to create amazing art - this time a beautiful matching song and illustration. People of discerning artistic taste, such as yourselves, can find it here: http://music.kimboekbinder.com/album/new-york-city

It's been a while between updates, but that's just because we've been working hard on making amazing things!

Based on extremely helpful advice from Morgan Hay (who worked Coraline), the characters have all been reconstructed and now have much stronger articulation for better posing. We've even devised a clever method for animating faces, so the puppets can better express themselves with frowns, winks, and the fluttering of eyelashes.

Cutting out the innumerable baroque curlicues of Molly's art has been known to drive people to madness, but the results are easily worth a little insanity. When it's all assembled, that fine detail is just amazing. Our initial tests showed how wonderful the paper world looks with more layers, so I've been really enhancing this three-dimensional feel by adding a lot more depth to the sets. As you can see from these pictures, the results speak for themselves.

The animating has begun, and it's a wonderful feeling to see our world come to life. There really is a special magic unique to stopmotion, and as these inanimate objects begin to move on their own it's impossible not too smile. It's so exciting to see it all coming together, our script and storyboards turning into reality.

Up to now I've been the only one in the studio, which has worked fine to get us to this point. But now that shooting has begun we need to pick up the pace, so a team of talented individuals has been assembled to help with the big push toward the finish. There are now around six other people working with me, including a project manager to keep everything on track, another skilled animator to help with especially tricky sequences, and numerous crafty assistants to continue building the next set while I'm shooting.

As we pick up speed moving forward, I promise to do a better job posting regular updates, and be sure to keep an eye on www.ihaveyourheart.com for photos from the studio of works in progress.

Thanks again to everyone involved, this is a huge team effort, and we are extremely grateful to everyone who pitched in and supported the kickstarter, making it possible for us to create this animation. Stopmotion is an art that requires a lot of patience, and we thank you for yours, but things are speeding up now!

We made it! Thank you so so so much! 

We're heading into full production and will be updating you along the way. Remember to check out www.ihaveyourheart.com for the full production blog and behind the scenes info.

XX JimKimMolly

Thank you for helping us reach our $14,000 goal and making our animation possible. You are WONDERFUL!

In celebration of reaching our goal we have posted two videos of cross continental champagne revelry on our site: www.ihaveyourheart.com

We have also announced a new makeup line by Sweet Libertine Makeup company based on the 'I Have Your Heart' film project. You can now get fancy natural mineral eyeshadows in 'Bonesaw' silver and 'Open Heart Surgery' red. 

Visit www.ihaveyourheart.com to purchase the eyeshadow set.

XXX

Jim, Kim, Molly