I am working on the movie again! The work is absorbing so everything else tends to be back-burnered, including newsletters. I am trying to balance the work better this time around. The first time working on "A Scottish Migration" was before Covid, when film work took up all my time. So much that I became frustrated and couldn't see the end of the tunnel.

Balancing out movie work, is making products for Yellow Dot Shop. After a tough respiratory illness in February I am back at the outdoor markets again in March. This means dividing up my days between movie making and product making. My first market back was at West End Farmer's Market, which happened to fall during a "polar vortex," the one day with freezing temperatures in the 20s and 30s Fahrenheit (-6 to 0 Celsius). Despite being frozen numb, we had a good number of customers, thanks to the vendors who showed up every Sunday this winter. I was able to show off my new tote bags that I worked on recently.

The image above shows my sketches of the Gregory kids, the siblings of William Gregory, at the time he left Scotland for America. I will use a clever trick to bring motion into the scene without using animation. I will pan across the flat images in 3 dimensional screen space to nice effect.

My plan was to use my existing illustrations and finish the movie with what I have. But when I see the half-finished sketches, I feel I must make improvements. So yes, my list of tasks does seem to be growing. But hopefully not too much, as I keep the images as black and white drawings. This is why I am only doing the first half of the film for now. Hopefully to be finished in a few months and possibly to be shown in Alexandria this Fall.

The ship image above was found recently in a shop window. It is useful for scenes that still need finalizing. What did an enormous sailing ship look like as it headed down the River Clyde? The ship above is about the right scale. Last Summer we were in Greenock, Scotland at that very spot on the Clyde that many Scots left from. There happened to be an even bigger ship, a modern cruise liner. The port of Greenock is naturally deep, so ships dock there today as they always have. This huge vessel belched a loud atonal melody before gliding silently out of port and down the River Clyde. I took photos of the behemoth making its way down the river until it disappeared around the bend. This helps me see what it must have looked like 225 years ago, when large sailing ships headed down the Clyde. They were the only way to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

I am renaming the film "A Scottish Migration." It will be shown on my "Patreon" page. Hopefully you will consider signing up as a member of my page for free. That way you will get an email alert when I post the film and make it available for viewing in full, online. It will be about half an hour in length for this first half of the film. More work is needed to complete the second half. That can come later.

Ellen Hamilton, Yellow Dot Designs and Yellow Dot Shop