California born filmmaker, animator, sculptor and painter Allison Schulnik creates another textural masterpiece with ‘Mound,’ her sixth and most complex film to date. It follows ‘Forest‘ a music video for the band Grizzly Bear. ‘Mound’ was created solely by the artist and features over 100 hand-sculpted and sewn puppets.

The labor-intensive piece took nearly eight months, at times requiring 2 hours to create a single frame. The musical accompaniment to the film is “It’s Raining Today,” lent by legendary singer-songwriter Scott Walker. Originally released in 1969, the moody melodramatic song perfectly orchestrates her world of “rejects, misfits and their landscapes.”

From her interview with San Francisco’s fecalface.com:

I see you went to school for animation. (CalArts- Experimental Animation Degree) Did you start doing that and then find painting? Why did you decide you want make art?

My mom, aunt, uncle, everyone in my small family is a painter, or an artist of some kind. So I was painting my whole life, out doing landscape paintings around the beach where I grew up when I was 14-ish. Thus, painting was kind of not what I wanted to do for a while when I went to school, that’s why I went to film school. Also the life of a painter just seemed a little too serious for me, but I’ve managed to make it what I want it to be for myself, I think. I have a healthy balance going on right now, hopefully. Also, my dad’s an architect, that’s probably where the animation bug came from — making little worlds that you create and be supreme leader in, except mine are mini and made from wood and clay. I have always been drawn to fantasy worlds, theatrical worlds, hand-made worlds. This world doesn’t always hold my attention for very long. But I also love animators and comedians. That’s probably another reason I was drawn to animation.

What/who inspires your work?

So much… music, film. It’s an endless list. Harryhausen, Bruce Bickford, Klaus Kinski, Superjail, Terry Gilliam, Eric Yahnker, Peter Saul, Andre Butzer, Armen Eloyan, Daniel Richter, Basil Wolverton, Crumb, Balthus, Ensor, Van Gogh, Soutine, Hockney, Paul McCarthy, Jan Svankmajer, Rankin Bass, King Kong, Pina Bausch, R. Stevie Moore, Big Business, Upsilon Acrux, Lightning Bolt, Angel Witch, Venom, the Earthmen, Barbara Streisand, the original production of ‘a Chorus Line’, Slayer…

Allison had this to say about working with Dragonframe:

“I love Dragon. It’s the best!”

Credits:
Film by Allison Schulnik
Cinematography by Helder K. Sun.
“It’s Raining Today” written by Noel Scott Engel