Powdered Graphite, Rotoscoping & Animation | Drift Off with Cozy, Meandering Talk

Looking for a sleep podcast to fall asleep fast, reduce anxiety, and quiet an overactive mind? This calming episode of The Insomnia Project is designed for insomnia relief, stress reduction, and gentle nighttime unwinding through slow, soothing conversation.
Marco Timpano welcomes guest Becka Barker for a relaxed discussion about animation, creative techniques, and artistic materials, offering low-stimulation, easygoing content perfect for bedtime listening. From the process of animation to the technique of rotoscoping—tracing over live-action footage to create realistic movement—this episode creates a calm and curious atmosphere.
The conversation also drifts into the use of powdered graphite and other artistic tools, exploring the subtle details of creative work in a soft, meandering style that helps ease racing thoughts and promote relaxation. With unhurried pacing and gentle storytelling, this calming podcast episode is ideal for sleep, stress relief, or quiet background listening.
Whether you’re searching for a sleep podcast for insomnia, calming background noise while you work, or a gentle way to unwind at the end of the day, The Insomnia Project offers a comforting, reliable escape.

​Powdered Graphite, Rotoscoping & Animation
(Original airdate: June 26, 2016)

Marco:  Welcome to the Insomnia Project. Sit back, relax and listen as we have a conversation, um, about the mundane. One thing that we can promise is that our conversation will hopefully be less than fascinating so that you can feel free to just drift off. Thank you for joining us. We hope you will listen and sleep. Follow us, uh, listen and sleep on the [email protected] I'm your host, Marco Timpano and I have the delight of having Becca Barker on um, this episode of the Insomnia Project. And you may remember I had a conversation with her in Florida about sea slugs. We did a part one and it was so fascinating. We will have to do a part two and she's currently working. Becca, welcome to the Insomnia Project.

Becka Barker:  Hi Marco, thanks for having me again.

Marco:  This is an exciting episode because I am in a studio with Becca and she's an animator and she is currently animating.

Marco:  Is that right?

Marco:  Animator? Is that the correct term?

Becka Barker:  Yeah, um, well, I'm, um, I'm an independent experimental animator. And so if you just say animator, that's fine as far as I'm concerned. But I guess, um, people who are more familiar with like the um, film industry or the industry side of animation and animator is a very specific job, um, where you're the one actually moving the parts. Huh. What I'm doing is, uh, I'm directing and creating and all the other. Basically, you know, like any independent artist, I'm kind of doing all the jobs in one.

Marco:  I see.

Becka Barker:  But you can call me an animator.

Marco:  Well, it's interesting because animators often used in other, in other senses of the word. And what I'm trying to say is if you go to a particular, um, you know how they had these like old timey places and they'll have people dressed in period costumes that sort of walk you through the different rooms of an old house and explain what went on there. They're also called animators.

Becka Barker:  Yeah.

Marco:  Because they animate the story, I believe, of the home or the historical facts. So it's interesting how a word like animator has many different sort of meanings. And some people will take, will take a certain, I don't want to say offense, but we'll take it to task what you call them. So you're right. So you're an experimental. Can you repeat that?

Marco:  What you were.

Becka Barker:  Sorry. Oh, um, like, what would you, what

Marco:  would your title on this project be?

Becka Barker:  Oh, um, just the person who made it.

Marco:  Okay, fair enough. The creator. The artist. So let's just call you an artist then, because you are doing. Let's just, just let's, let's just say artist because you are an artist.

Becka Barker:  Let's just put it out there and like, I'm an artist.

Marco:  And let's not apologize for it.


Becca uses graphite powder for animation technique for a particular project

And let's just, uh, you'll, you'll hear, uh, Becca throughout this episode using various tools of her craft as she animates this particular. And I'm watching her and it's very fascinating because it's primarily, primarily black, white and gray is what I'm seeing. And she's using graphite powder.

Becka Barker:  Mhm.

Marco:  For this particular project.

Becka Barker:  Mhm. It's my first time using graphite powder like in my life, so it's pretty exciting.

Marco:  Why graphite powder, not a graphite stick?

Becka Barker:  Well, um, because. Pausing to take a frame there. Um, I'm using graphite powder because the particular animation technique I'm doing for this project is something where I'm manipulating one drawing over and over and over again. Um, so I'll have, um, an image on the page and then I'll take a picture of it. Which if you know anything about, uh, classical animation or old, uh, time animation, you might be saying to yourself, well, duh, that's how animation is done. You draw a picture and then you photograph it. Then you draw the next picture in the sequence and you photograph that. Um, well, that is happening here too. But instead of using a different piece of paper for each frame of the animation, I'm remanipulating one piece of paper.

Marco:  So this piece of paper which you've taped down is your canvas.

Becka Barker:  Yes.

Marco:  And what you've done is you've taken this graphite powder and you're placing it on the page in different sort of shapes and moving it frame by frame.

Becka Barker:  That's right.

Marco:  Or erasing the graphite powder. Where you want. Would you call it negative space or white or, um, I don't know what

Becka Barker:  you'd call it, but it's just part of the image.

Marco:  Okay.

Becka Barker:  Yeah. I mean, I like black and white because the only thing you really have to worry about is contrast when it's

Marco:  black and white versus color.

Becka Barker:  Yeah, I don't have to deal with color. Color at all. Um, when I was a painting student at NASCAD a million years ago, um, I realized pretty quickly that color is something I'm not very Good at.

Marco:  See, I would argue, because I have a painting of yours on our wall and it's a tester painting. So you painted it before you did?

Becka Barker:  Yeah, it was like a sketch.

Marco:  A sketch with. Done in oil. Yeah. And it's one of my favorite paintings I've seen, and so m. I'm very fortunate to have it. So I think the world is losing out. You're not painting in color, but that's. That we have this beautiful animation that's happening.

Becka Barker:  That's nice of you to say.

Marco:  Uh, right before my eyes.


You're in a gallery exhibition in Toronto called Frame is the Keyframe

And, uh, we should mention that you're in a gallery exhibition of media arts called the Frame is the Keyframe.

Becka Barker:  Right. Yes, That's. That's, um. This work has been commissioned for that

Marco:  show and it's presented by the Toronto Animated Image Society. So that's why you're here. We're able to do this because you live in Halifax, but you happen to be in Toronto creating this art. You can hear her erasing and taking frames as we go. And it's curated by Maddie Pillar. And you're one of the seven artists that are going to be participating in this exhibition. Yeah, it's pretty exciting.

Becka Barker:  Yeah, I'm super excited to be part of this.


Why did you go for graphite powder for this project

Marco:  Um, so we were talking about graphite powder.

Becka Barker:  Yes.

Marco:  Why did you go for graphite powder?

Becka Barker:  Okay, so the reason why I decided to try graphite powder for this project is because where I'm remanipulating the, uh, same piece of. Well, I'm actually using vellum right now, but the same piece of paper, uh, over and over and over again. Um, I knew I needed materials that could be up for that task of constant erasing, redrawing, erasing, redrawing. Um, and so the graphite powder is really useful because, um, when I use it with this vellum, it doesn't really stick to the surface of the page very, very much.

Marco:  Whereas if you used a, um, graphite stick, it would stick more.

Becka Barker:  Yeah, it would be harder for me to erase off. I see. And I want. I want the graphite to be there on the page, of course, for each frame. But, um, I also want to be able to erase it easily so that I can manipulate that image over and over again. Does that make sense? It does, yeah. So I need to erase it to change the picture. And, um. And so the choice of materials is actually pretty, pretty important how this is going to work and whether or not I can get it done in time and what the look of the piece is going to be. So I decided, um, I've Done. The kind of animation I'm doing, uh, where I change the image as I shoot the photos that then become animated is called under the camera, an under the camera sort of technique of animation. And um, your listeners, if you're at all curious about um, seeing more examples of under the camera animation, I highly recommend checking out some of Caroline Leaf's work at the NFB from the 1970s. Um, she did these really gorgeous, phenomenal animations, short animations. And they're kind of, there's some of those iconic Canadian NFB animations from back in the day. Um, she has one called the Owl who Married a Goose and it's all sand. Oh, all of the images are made by sand. And what she did was she manipulated the sand over and over again under the camera as she was shooting it.

Marco:  So when you say under the camera. Mhm.

Becka Barker:  Mm.

Marco:  I'm just gonna describe what I'm seeing here. So I see an SLR camera or, ah, a fancier version I guess, or a camera that anyone could possibly own, a Canon camera. And it's suspended right above the vellum paper that you're creating the art on. So it's kind of like an aerial view of what you're creating. And you take snapshots for each frame that you need, correct?

Becka Barker:  Right, right.

Marco:  How do you know how your image is going to be for each frame?

Becka Barker:  Um, well, the camera is actually connected to a computer over here and I'm using a software, a piece of software called dragonframe, which is um, a frame capture program. And so that the window on the computer actually shows me the live view of what the camera's seeing. So I don't actually have to look through the camera, I can just look through the frame as it appears on the computer and I can be assured of what's going to show up in the frame and how it's going to look.


You're using a technique called rotoscoping to animate live action videos

Marco:  Now you were telling me about another technique that you have done a lot of animation with, which is actually animating onto the cells of captured video, is that correct? Uh, you're explaining this, this particular technique to me versus this one that you're currently doing right in front of me.

Becka Barker:  Oh, um, well, for this project, and I've done this for other recent projects too, I'm doing something, I'm using a technique called rotoscoping.

Marco:  Okay, that's it.

Becka Barker:  Yeah. Um, and what rotoscoping is in traditional filmmaking, um, and animation is when you take a piece of live action film. So just like a regular clip of somebody say, walking and um, live action Just means not animated. Just like.

Marco:  Like if I took a video camera and I filmed a gentleman walking across the street.

Becka Barker:  Exactly. Um, so you take a clip like that and then, um, either by printing out each frame of that video and then taking tracing paper and tracing on top of it, or by using a computer and breaking that clip out into individual frames. Because, as you probably know, film and video, um, images, we see motion, um, because we think we're seeing something moving. It's not actually. The image is not actually moving, though. It's made up of a series of many still frames. And because of this phenomenon called persistence of vision, which is what allows your eye to blend frames, you perceive something as moving. Um, so you take each of these individual frames and you trace, um, over them and then you. And that's how you animate it. You photograph your tracings.

Marco:  Right.

Becka Barker:  And so by doing that, um, in a weird way it sounds like a way of cheating. Um, and it's not really, because as the person doing the tracing, you're still. It's amazing how many decisions you're still making when it comes down to where are you going to draw that line? How are you going to trace that? What are you going to include? What are you not going to include? And so what I'm doing is I'm using, um, live action clips, video clips, uh, taken from things, uh, I've seen online, very particular things. In this case, uh, weather balloons and, um, dash cam footage of a falling meteorite. And I'm using that as a reference on the computer. And I'm able to sort of put it on the computer so that it's partially see through.

Marco:  Right.

Becka Barker:  And, um, so I can partially see that and then I can also partially see what I'm actually drawing. So I'm kind of layering it by looking at the computer, Right? Yeah.

Marco:  That's awesome.

Becka Barker:  Does that make sense?

Marco:  Yeah, it does.

Becka Barker:  Uh, yeah. It's a weird kind of hand eye coordination because usually when you draw something, you look at the thing that you're drawing. Right. But I can't do that with this. I have to have my hand on the drawing with the eraser or with the graphite. But my eyes have to be on the computer screen, perpendicular to that. Looking at the computer screen as I'm. As I'm eraser.

Marco:  But as you look at the computer screen, we can see your hand in the frame because it's connected to the SLR camera that's above us.

Becka Barker:  That's right.

Marco:  And so you're kind of, in a way following your hand on the screen to figure out and erasing the graphite.

Becka Barker:  Yeah.

Marco:  And you're watching your hand on the screen as, uh, you erase the graphite.

Becka Barker:  And so my brain, yeah, my brain is trying to control the thing I'm seeing on the screen, like my hand, which is kind of trippy, um, but also kind of fun because, uh, I guess it appeals to the, um, the old performance artist in me because in a way, this is part of why I like doing this, is that it is sort of a performance. I'm performing a drawing essentially.

Marco:  So it is kind of like a dance. And what's nice is like you have, you have a little soft brush that you brush away the erasings, and it kind of gives this sort of, I don't know, cleansing of the feel that you're working on each time. You're kind of like just cleansing the vellum and taking everything away and taking the still shot. So it has a very sort of ceremonial feel to it, if you will.

Becka Barker:  Um, sorry.

Marco:  No, it's all right.

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Becka Barker:  Uh.

Marco:  It's neat because we're.

Becka Barker:  It's ritualistic.

Marco:  That's what I was trying to say.

Becka Barker:  It reminds me of, um, like it's not. It's not quite the same as those, um, mandalas made out of sand that are so carefully made and then are destroyed.

Marco:  That's what I was thinking of when you said Carolyn Caroline Leaf's work, like, because she uses sand. I was thinking of a Mandela. And, uh.

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Becka Barker:  And. Yeah, and that's. And I think there is something about, um, that. That really appeals to me because every time you manipulate a drawing or you take a frame, when you work this way or when you work the way she did, um, you really have to commit to that. There's no backsies. Right. You can't. If you screwed up a shot, too bad. You can't just pull out that drawing and re. Photograph it.

Marco:  Sure.

Becka Barker:  It's gone. The drawing does not exist anymore.

Marco:  Has that happened to you?

Becka Barker:  Oh, yeah.

Marco:  Okay.

Becka Barker:  That's why you do lots of tests and stuff before.

Marco:  Sure.

Becka Barker:  Um, or you just, you know, figure out a workaround to make it okay.

Marco:  Right.

Becka Barker:  But I, um, kind of like that. You know, it's a bit of a tightrope walk, and you definitely don't have a net. It's like, here you go, it's. And I guess to me, that's part of what makes it a performance. You know, you commit to the thing you're performing in that moment.

Marco:  And what was your inspiration? I know it's not an easy thing for an artist to. To sort of explain what inspires them, but this particular piece, you have, um, footage of a meteorite crashing and weather balloons. How did you get there?

Becka Barker:  Uh, um.

Marco:  Well, as we delve into the mind of the artist.

Becka Barker:  Here we go. Uh, yeah, I guess, um, I have some recent work. Recent. Uh, one sort of recent thread of my practice as an artist, as a visual artist, uh, has been around, um, thinking about the ways we use different kinds of media, um, to see the world around us, um, or to what we're using these things for. Is it because we want information? Is it because it's entertainment? Um, and I'm super fascinated by um, pop culture and the globalization of pop culture. Um, and I'm speaking like very self consciously as somebody who is a Westerner, who is from um, you know, a country that, or a part of the world that um, considers itself to be, you know, kind of a dominator in terms of, um, global pop culture phenomena. But what's interesting was living in Korea for a number of years, um, pop culture in Korea, um, the government there was very, uh, self consciously trying to uh, export, always trying to export the pop culture, Korean pop culture. Um, anyway, how does this figure into my work? So I guess I just try to think about how, um, these things that I see online and these different sort of phenomena, um, an earlier work that I did in 2006, so that's 10 years old now. But, um, where I kind of started picking at this fascination, um, was I was trying to capture that feeling of being what it's like when you're in a movie theater. Um, that idea of being together alone. Uh, because at the time, you know, just past Y2K, it was like, oh, everybody's gonna watch, everybody's gonna watch television online in the future. Nobody's gonna get together to watch things. Um, it's, uh. Everything's gonna be very individualized, very tailored to specific audience needs. So I guess the ultimate question I was interested in was what constitutes an audience? And um, does it matter if people are together or are apart when they witness something? And so one of the things I've always liked about going to the movies is you're there in a dark room with a lot of people you don't know. And interestingly, you're probably all having similar reactions to things you're seeing on the screen. And there's something very comforting in that.

Marco:  Sure.


I'm looking at the phenomenon of amateur weather balloon, GoPro culture

Becka Barker:  You know, so, um, for this, this is a very long answer, but, um, so for this project, um, some. So fast forward 10 years to now with this particular project, um, I was looking at, I'm looking at the phenomenon of, um, sort of, um, amateur weather balloon, um, weather balloon, GoPro culture. You know, you always hear about these university classes or this group of students. Students or these people that decide they, they're going to put up a weather balloon and send it off into space. And because GoPro cameras, these little, very tiny, very lightweight but very powerful cameras that always have like a sort of fisheye lens on them and they're very durable cameras too. They can go underwater, they can go anywhere. Um, you see tons of videos online that people took with their GoPros now. Right, right. So these people will send up weather balloons into the atmosphere, um, and attach a GoPro to it and they'll record the GoPro will record everything. The balloon going up, up, up, up, uh, up to the. At some point, inevitably the balloon pops and then it falls back to the earth. And at the same time in Russia, and this is a phenomenon that's quite particular to Russia, it seems.

Marco:  I love that we go from Canada to Korea to Russia in this episode, but please continue.

Marco:  Right.

Becka Barker:  And the weather balloons. By the way, most of the weather balloon footage I found is from the US Although there are some European sources and there's one Japanese source that's slightly more global ish. Um, in the so called sort of developed world, I guess. Um, but the, uh, Russian phenomenon, uh, is having dash cam. A dash cam in your car. Right, Right. Almost every, uh, well, I don't know this for a fact, but a lot of drivers, it seems, have these little cameras mounted on the dashboards of their car that just face outward and record footage of whatever's happening in front of the driver. And you see these incredible crazy video clips online of car crashes. Um, apparently there's some very gruesome ones online, um, because there are lots and lots of cars. Car accidents in Russia. Um, but the reason why a lot of people gravitated towards putting a dash cam in their car is because, um, the police are so corrupt. Right. Or there'll be people trying to do insurance scams.

Marco:  That's what I had heard.

Becka Barker:  Right. So they're pretending to get hit by the car, but the cameras recorded that. In fact, they're fine.

Marco:  Right.

Becka Barker:  So a, uh, lot of people get them for protection.

Marco:  Sure.

Becka Barker:  Um, so what fascinated me about these two phenomena is that, um, we always, when we think of cameras and we think of recording or we think of making movies or whatever, video, um, at least to me, we always think about the eye and how we choose to put what we put in the frame. Right. How are you going to take that shot? Are you. And with amateur home movie footage, it's often very wandery footage. Um, you don't even, you know, the person shooting often really doesn't have a solid concept of what they're shooting before they shoot it. So in a way it's kind of stream of consciousness. And I've played with that in previous work too. Um, I actually really like using really crappy amateur footage. Often stuff that I take. Um, I just had a show a couple weeks ago actually as part of the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival. And, um, that involved a lot of, uh, home movie type footage and sort of playing with the weird blurred frames or the sort of wandering aspect of what the person behind the camera is doing as they're searching for something in the frame. Like, what is it? I'm actually shooting here. Oh, my kid just walked that way. I'm gonna follow my kid. Right. Um, so that's in stark contrast to this because with a weather balloon, there's no human behind the camera, it's just on its own. And with the dash cam, there's somebody driving the car. Yes. But they're not manipulating the camera. Yeah. They're not looking through the lens.

Marco:  The camera picks up what it picks up where you've mounted it.

Becka Barker:  Yeah. And so just that idea that there isn't a human behind the lens or a human eye behind the lens, choosing the frames was something I really wanted to play with. And so, um, by taking that footage as reference and then kind of tracing with my graphite powder each of those frames onto a piece of paper, I'm trying to reintroduce the hand or something that's handmade or something that involves human construction, I guess. Um, and I just think they make for really interesting images. And the thing that I find an interesting contrast between those two sources of footage that the dash cam versus the weather balloon. When you look at the weather balloon footage, the horizon is always flipping around on you and changing because the camera's just twirling and twirling. Um, and I love that in the dashcam footage, the horizon is always the same because it's always from that car point of view. And so I thought that would provide a really interesting contrast. So this piece is actually an installation made up of several different clips. So I'm not actually going to turn this into one film that goes from start to finish. It'll just be a series of clips very much the same as what I took from online, only it's all going to be rendered in hand manipulated graphite powder.

Marco:  There you go. Well, I know you have about 3,000 frames you have to animate, so we won't take any more of your time. And please feel free to erase and use what you need to do. Um, thank you so much for allowing us. This sort of bird's ear view of what you're doing for the frame is the keyframe.

Becka Barker:  It's quite the diatribe, I went on.

Marco:  I think it was great. I mean, listen, we had an animated discussion about animation is what I'm going to put on the. On the, uh, I want to say liner notes, but on the notes on, um, the podcast.

Becka Barker:  Oh, I hope it was boring enough that people can fall asleep.

Marco:  Oh, um, you know what? I'm sure it. Whether it was boring enough, I'm sure people were relaxing as they listened.

Becka Barker:  Oh, good.

Marco:  I had the pleasure of having Becca Barker. Uh, stay tuned because we're gonna do part two of the Sea Slugs Nudibranch episode that we promised that we taped in Florida. So, Becca, I hope you're okay to do that in the upcoming future.

Becka Barker:  Oh, for sure, for sure.


Marco: We want to thank the Toronto Animated Image Society for this exhibition

Marco:  So, um, we want to thank the Toronto Animated Image Society for. For this exhibition. And we are recording from the Toronto Animated Image Society Tay's, um, building, I guess you would say. Yeah.

Becka Barker:  Here in Toronto. Yeah, they're one of the inhabitants of this building here on Dufferin street.

Marco:  And you've mentioned the NFB with regards to Caroline Leaf's work. And I just want to let our listeners who aren't familiar with the NFB know that it stands for the National Film Board of Canada.

Becka Barker:  Oh, that's right. Yes.

Marco:  Becca, thank you so much.

Becka Barker:  It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Marco.

Marco:  And, uh, all the best with your art. Thank you.

Becka Barker:  Thanks.


This episode was recorded in Toronto, Canada

Marco:  You're listening to the Insomnia Project, as always, produced by drumcast Productions, and this episode was recorded in Toronto.

Becka Barker:  Mhm. SA. Mhm. Sam.