It’s Friday, which means it’s last day of Five days of Felted Friends. Today’s creature was suggested by a reader. Thank you reader! Felting the octopus was fairly straightforward. I started with a purple ball for the body, and for the tentacles, I used the same “dreadlocking” technique I used when felting the baby elephant’s trunk. 
After adding some eyes, lashes, and a big grin I knew my crafted cephalopod needed a home. The felted owl, sloth, elephant, and bluebirds, could all live on land, but like the felted goldfish, the octopus needed an underwater abode. After getting out the tri-pod, staging an underwater scene in my light box, and taking over 200 photos that were whittled down to just 75 still images, I imported them into iMovie, and the rest is history. I hope you will enjoy the video below. I’d love to hear what you think of it. Like a flip-book (and the ocean!) it’s a bit choppy, still I can’t help but smile when I think about the adventures Mr. Octo might be having while my back is turned.
Thanks again to everyone for reading, and for the suggestions you sent me!
I will be doing more felting in the future. If you would like a custom felted friend, please let me know. Custom animals would start at $25+. If interested, please contact me at megan(at)radmegan.com
Thanks again for reading. Happy Friday, and happy felting!
Flying Spaghetti Monster or Octopus! Love it! Thanks for the week of felted critters. Enjoyed watcing.
Hi! So cute! How did you animate it? I know nothing about animation. Is there a simple way to do it?
Ah! I love it! So cute!!! You are totally rad!
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you all liked
Belinha- the way I put my animation together was probably not the most ideal way. I assembled my underwater scene on the kitchen table, in a make-shift light box. I added lighting and put my digital camera on a tripod. Then I positioned the octopus and took one picture. Click. Then I moved him slightly, and took another pic. Click. Moved again. Click. Moved again and moved a drawing of a school of fish into frame. Click… click click click…
After I was happy with the series of photos I had taken, I brought ALL of the photos into Photoshop to do any color correction AND to mask out the wire I used to suspend the octopus and sea star! After I was happy with all my photographs, I selected the entire collection of photos, and imported them into iMovie. I removed the Ken Burns filter, set the frames to show for .3 seconds each, added some canned music that comes free with iMovie, and then saved the Quicktime video. iMovie makes it really easy to animate the sequence. I did all the hard work during the photography stage. If you have iMovie, and are looking for help, I’d recommend the lynda.com course on it. My good friend Garrick Chow is the instructor, and he’s pretty fantastic when it comes to walking you through the steps. Here’s the link. http://www.lynda.com/home/displaycoursenotabs.aspx?lpk2=508&lpk67=true
Good luck if you take on your own animation. I’d love to know how it turns out, so keep me posted
xo
radmegan
O. M. G.!!! This video is so very cool! I wish I was this handy with a computer…and camera….and Photoshop. Thanks so much for doing that – it really made my day!
Thanks Cassandra!!
This is the cutest video ever! I’m so bummed that I’ve been behind on reading your blogs. They always make me smile! XO
That is the cutest darn thing I’ve ever seen!