The hand-painted animation technique that I developed is called DIG-TAC, which is an intersection between digital (video) and tactile (painting). Formally, it is a cycle from film to painting, back to film - resulting in a very emotional, psychologically intense viewing experience. The process weaves the physicality and spontaneity of the analog brush/charcoal mark into the digital moving image in order to create tension between the two gestural rhythms. It is a meditative time consuming process in which I film a 20 second video (moving image) sequence, then print out each individual frame onto a piece of paper (usually there are about 300-500 individual still images) and I hand paint each "micro- moment" with ink, brush and graphite, then I re-film them into what is a fully combined re-animated painted moving image. I create the thousands of individual paintings for the DIG-TAC experimental animations. The DIG-TAC process allowed for me to create visceral physical images with brush and paint on top of the physical images of birds in flight, boats on water, images of Nina Simone dancing, blues singers, Toni Morrison walking through the Louvre, people crossing over dangerous borders and many more sequences. These DIG TAC animations become crucial artistic connective and illustrative moments that link interviews and historic footage making them feel as if they are all unified around art, movement and line. The animations bring out the sensual andsensory physical experience as a viewer. I have used this technique in a variety of video installations and other short films as well.
