Some may complain about disruption SoundTransit is causing with the walled-off construction pit for its future Capitol Hill Station, scheduled to open in four years. But not animator Clyde Petersen and fellow members of the Seattle Experimental Animation Team. For them, the STart Public Art Program has provided a 19 by 30 foot slab of wall that will, beginning tonight, become screen where eight short films will emerge. “It’s gigantic,” says Peterson of the “Wallrus” site near the northeast corner of Cal Anderson Park. Over the next six months (or less), he’ll create a series of colored chalk drawings that will become “an animated music video for The Thermals…placing them in outer space.” The Portland band’s new album Personal Life launches this week from Kill Rock Stars, and Petersen will painstakingly animate the song “Not Like Any Other Feeling.” He notes, “It’s about four minutes long. I’ve never done a project of this scope.” Let’s do the math: He’ll execute 15 drawings for each second of video—that’s over 3,000 unique panels of animation! After each drawing is done, it’s photographed with a DSLR from the same fixed position on a tripod. “I’m gonna try to do it as quickly as possible, because of the weather,” Petersen explains. “You have to animate when it’s not raining.” BRIAN MILLER
