ROXXIE FROGS

Well Hello Again,

Here we are and I'm delighted! After keeping my head down for what feels like many moon turns, I have resurfaced to share this new facet of my little world with you. I have been slowly but arduously teaching myself stop motion animation and thus have created a little visual snippet from a screenplay called ROXXIE FROGS that I wrote some time back. It is a silly wild story, filled with debauchery, drugs, daring and of course a bit of drama. It is one of the rare times I think where I wrote something without it being painstakingly frustrating, but rather an absolute joy. I giggled the whole time and I gave myself no boundaries with which to keep caged by - if the story took a turn half-way through...well...I'd let it, but somehow it all managed to come together in a weird wango way.

I discovered a wonderful artist: Edgar Higgens (@_artmulch_), whose work I fell in love with immediately. If you don't already, go follow him! You may have seen a viral video of his on Tik Tok in which he takes us along with him in the process of making paper puppets. I had never seen anyone do this before, never even considered this was how it could work - but of course, it seems so simple once you know... Like a magic trick. Yes yes! That's it! I felt as if he had shown me the secret to a magic trick, one I knew I could do! I'm so grateful and it's funny cause he'll likely never know the impact I'm sure that that one video had on several others including myself, prompting us little makers of stuff to be creative and take influence. I had been making things out of paper for years now, props and sets and spaceships, oh my! But, seeing this I knew I wanted to try to do something. I ventured to the dollar store, stocked up on supplies and went to the drawing board. I sketched out characters and through trial and error learned some very valuable information about how and how-not-to design the puppets for easy filming. See, you need sturdy paper and careful with watercolor because of bending and curling. Foam Core is wonderful but tricky too. Basically, you have to find what works for you and as this is really my first go around, all things considered I think I did okay, but I'm still learning!

It's just a little bit of silliness really and I'm not entirely convinced it'll make sense to everyone but that's okay... like I said, this is the first of hopefully many that I'll do and there's lots of room for improvement! I'm excited to keep learning new ways to tell my stories without breaking the piggy bank. As an unrepresented writer I get sad some of the time and wonder if I'm doing enough to seek out agents or producers and what have you... truth is, I've never been much good at selling. Though, the fact remains, I have stories for sale so by-George I'll keep trying! For now, here we are and it hasn't been boring yet!

Anyway, to all who watched this 3-minute fever dream, thank you <3 I adore you !! And thank you to my dear friends, actors Kapila Rego (@tiny_bosss) and Julian Nelson (@juliannelson) for helping me bring this to life! <3 Until next time.

XXx

- A