Behind the Scenes Calligraphy

Those who have followed through my creations for a significant amount of time would realize that they always reflect a season I’m going through, or something that hit me during the course of the week.

I was listening to this song from youtube yesterday, as part of a playlist. And it’s strange the lyrics haven’t caught me earlier on.

A part of the song says:

They say it only takes a little faith
To move a mountain
Well good thing
A little faith is all I have, right now
But God, when You choose
To leave mountains unmovable
Oh give me the strength to be able to sing
It is well with my soul

I remember when I first met my now-husband (over beers), one of the things I said was “We don’t pray for God to answer prayers of what we want. We pray for His will to be done.” Yes. I said that over beers. I’m only really starting to understand what this means though.

I was reading Daniel 3 recently, which talks about the King making all his people bow down to a gold idol of himself. Verse 16-18 says: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand.But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Even if he does not. It literally means none of my agenda, but all God’s. It’s constant surrender to the plans that He has for me. And the human in me wants to say “But no, God, I want leh.” Daily surrender. It can sometimes be so tough when some of these things are close to your heart. But you know, God is so faithful. So faithful. He sends people alongside me, with similar struggles to encourage me. He sends his word to me, not through one but multiple people.

Lamentations 3: 22-24

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is where and in whom we find hope.

Last night, I was inspired. I wanted to do something for #WHPmoveit, so I literally googled “how to create a stop motion video” and came across a video by Trisha Zemp with The Slanted Lens, and decided ok I’m going to do this.

Trisha said lots of things, but I also flouted lots of rules. Why?

I have no tripod for my DSLR
I have no lights – which i plan to buy so please recommend some good ones if you know of some
My DSLR has no remote so i’d need to keep touching it when taking photos.

BUT, I made do. Here’s what I did.

Last night, I drew out my little character, cut all the stuff I needed – this included 2 scarves, 2 bottom hair bits, 4 propellers, and many many clouds. At the last minute, I realized I had paper clip birds and decided to add them in too.

Then I set my phone on a clamp facing down, right next to the window in hopes of getting the best light I can possibly get. I plugged it to my earphones because all of you would know, iphone’s camera can be operated through the volume buttons! Brilliant or not?

And this is how it looked top down.

Trisha said 10 frames per second. At the end of my scene (I didn’t count though), I had something like 80 or 90 frames. So that meant lots of photos of a girl with a plane in the clouds. I had to delete a few because there were so many moving elements, so I sometimes forgot to turn the propeller or and so it looked like it got stuck.

And then after that I put them all together in iMovie, all 0.1second per frame, and threw in some exciting music from iMovie too. Tadaaaah. I am very proud of how it turned out. Let me know if you like it, and I might do more!

The heart behind the creations

Behind the scenes of my first ever proper stop motion!