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I have a new website -- an online portfolio with examples of my artwork, film & animation.

Wish You Were Here -- Orlando Sentinel Article

Tonight is the broadcast premiere of Wish You Were Here, a documentary I created in collaboration with PBS affiliate WBCC in Cocoa, Florida. It airs on WBCC at 9 pm, right after the state-wide documentary, The Florida Dream.

Some people aren't mentioned in the article who deserve my thanks and recognition:

Jon White, director of production at WBCC, collaborated with me since this project was just a proposal about three years ago. In addition to being the cameraman, he co-edited and co-produced the project. Tom Morton served as a production manager/researcher/graphics assistant. My graphics team this summer included Rebekka Grohn, who did the drawn animation and many of the Motion effects and Photoshop work, Jack Steiner, who helped us figure out the "Son of Burns" special effects programs and got us up and running, and Eric Becker, who in one short week helped make some of the great animated scenes, including the shuffleboarder. The team at WBCC did the live-action shoots, and Doug Grover at WBCC did the sound mix.

I couldn't have done it without my family, Craig Saper, who served as assistant producer and humanities advisor, and my kids Sam, who helped with encouragement, ideas, music research, and graphic support, and Lucy, who was a key motivatory in helping me GET IT DONE!

-- Lynn

MOSAIC!

The Hannibal Square Community Mosaic I've worked on for six months is finally done!
To learn more visit my community mosaic blog.

Paper Walls

I made this film in 2001 working with WHYY_TV 12, the PBS station in Philadelphia. I co-directed it with producer Glenn Holsten. It won two Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards, and several other proizes in festivals. it has been shown at many schools and universities, and is in the library collection of Bryn Mawr College.

I had recently finished my master's thesis on this history of film dream, fantasy and hallucination sequences, and was eager to try out some techniques, so when Glenn Holsten asked if there was any project combing live-action and animation that I had always wanted to make, I suggested the Yellow Wallpaper.

It interested me to read that the story was first thought of as a ghost story before it was taken up by women's studies courses.

S. Weir Mitchell had been a prominent Philadelphia Physician, and I was able to find his books in the University of Pennsylvania's medical library. He wrote books with great titles like "Fat and Milk" (I think that's what it was called) about women's ailments.

My good friend Sarah Iams made the beautiful costumes,a and we had fun shopping for fabric and props.

I remember saying to the person getting the flowers for her desk -- NO LONG STEMMED RED ROSES -- and what did they bring back but long stemmed red roses. We ended up using them anyway (cutting down the stems), but also went out into the garden surrounding the beautiful old house in Villanova where we were filming, and cut some pretty pink garden roses.

Hannah Dalton, the actress in the piece, had fabulous hair to pile on her head Gibson-girl style. She also happened to look just like the woman I had drawn in my storyboards. She was only 18 or 19 at the time, I think.

We shot it on film and edited on video at WHYY. I traced the shapes and animated in the spaces where the animation would be superimposed. We half-dissolved some of the animation with the background so that , for example, the figure looks like it is inside the bottle.

The Future Inside Its Shell

"The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell."
- Zora Neale Hurston

Made of painted, bisqued clay, this organic, egg-shaped vessel has a peephole through which you can see the video inside.

Lynn Tomlinson Animating

Here I am working under the camera with clay-on-glass. I use plasticine-type oil-based modeling clay, spread onto glass like finger paints. Using small tools like erasers, and my fingers, I move the clay frame by frame to create vibrant animation. The Same Moon and Frog Harmony were created using this animation technique.

Frog Harmony

I love the look in the frogs' eyes when they finish singing!

I used under-the-camera clay-on-glass to animate this short funny spot about cooperation for kids' public television, created for ITVS (www.itvs.org) as was The Same Moon (below).

A former student of mine and his acapella singing group provided the excellent soundtrack.

Please e-mail me if you want more information about my work.

The Same Moon

This short animation is one of my favorites. It is about the connection we all share here on our planet -- we all see the same moon. Following the moon through windows was inspired by one of my favorite children's books, Harold and the Purple Crayon. I would like to expand the story of The Same Moon into a children's book one day.

I wrote and created this piece as an interstitial spot for children's public television. It is made using clay-on-glass-- brightly colored modelling clay, spread like fingerpaints on an underlit glass pane. I made the sky texture using a rectangular white eraser pressed into the clay. It received several awards in international festivals.

Please contact me for a complete reel of my work with a lot more clay-on-glass animation.

Assignment #3

This is a self-explanatory project made by students in my Summer Animation Course at Cornell University.

You can visit a blog I am building for the course here.

I built this arch for the front courtyard of our house. The animals are all creatures that live in our yard. The blocks are hollow, high-fired stoneware, supported by a aluminum arch inside.

Shopping for Utopia

Shopping for Utopia is an animated tour of kid-designed Utopian Societies. I made this is collaboration with my son's class. We used paper cut outs, inspired by Eric Carle's illustration technique in books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The students were in 1st through 4th grades. There are some interesting, somewhat ominous themes that emerge -- different than what I would have imagined for my ideal society about when I was a kid.

I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died

Since this was my first animated film that I sent out into the world, back in 1989, I decided it would be the first I would post on the web. I'm very excited to put up more! Stay tuned!

Florida Car & Driver

A old geezer and his beat up vehicle. Mixed media and white stoneware, low fired and painted. There have been a few changes since this picture was taken ( windshield, antenna, etc.). Awarded first place for sculpture at the Crealdé Student show.

Florida Car work in progress

After three hurricanes hit Orlando in the fall of 2004, I was feeling less romantic than I had been about my new home town's flora and fauna. One day I saw a grizzled old man driveing by, cigarette dangling out of the window, and I said -- I'm going to sculpt that guy! I worked on it at Crealdé for several months.

French Butter Dishes

Three french butter dishes. Cone 10 Stoneware. The butter is placed in a cup built into the lid. The base is filled with water which keeps the air and bacteria from getting to the butter.

Balloon vase

Stoneware vase, thrown and altered to look like a deflated balloon.

Fisherman and the Sea Teapot

This teapot was inspired by the folktale "The Fisherman and the Sea." The wave forms the handle, the fisherman's hat is the lid, and the fish's mouth is the spout. Cone 10 stoneware with glaze and underglazes.

Peaceful Head

This large head is made of clay, It has a peaceful, Zen expression. I created a latex mold from the piece and have made casts in cement and Hypertufa, and recently, have been making mask-like partial casts with paper clay.

Tubing at Rocks Springs

This is a 12 X 18 bas-relief wall piece made of clay, low-fired, painted with acrylics with multi-media details.

This is a scene from a great park here in Central Florida where you can float down the springs under a canopy of oaks and spanish moss.

Beach Combing Totem

I made this totem for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. It features real and imaginary creatures that might have washed up on shore.
Cone 10 stoneware with glazes.

Boxed In

BoxedIn
Originally uploaded by Summer Kitchen Studio.

Boxed In was created as a collaboration with my brother, Bill Tomlinson, for the Arts Front Project in Center City Philadelphia in 1996. This huge white figure crouched in a storefront window held a TV in one hand and a tiny surveillance camera in the other, so that when you looked at him, he was looking at your image on the TV monitor. Both sculpture and viewer are "Boxed In." A photo of this piece appeared in Sculpture Magazine, and in several articles in Philadelphia newspapers.