Another Storycorps story... John and Joe

This animation isn't technically something I would ever try to emulate myself, and it definitely wouldn't have been the style I would have picked for such a sad story, but somehow it works. I think maybe it's because it doesn't overpower the voice of John Sr. His story is at the forefront, which is how animation like this is supposed to work. So although it's a bit cartoony, you could say it's not as stylistically sophisticated as some of the other animations I look at e.g. the modern love ones, it works because it has heart.

What a nice idea! (Storycorps)

A while ago I heard about this and thought it was a really lovely and amazing idea to get people communicating more with each other and actually listening to each other's stories. Everyone loves hearing a good story and other recent projects such as Humans of New York have proved this. People are interested in each other's daily lives, their stories of love or loss and hardship because it makes us feel more human ourselves. I personally am addicted to reading the Modern Love Column, and it's not because I'm a soppy romantic (almost as many of the stories are about lost/failed love, familial love or friendship, as there are stories of true love conquering all). In a technological age where everything is fast-paced and abbreviated, it seems people still feel the pull of a well-told story.
Storycorps is an online archive of such stories, told and recorded by everyday people. They've created an app that allows you to record your conversation and upload it straight to the storycorps archive, and have come up with a set of questions to help those of us who don't know where to start. What's more, they've even started animating some of the stories as well!

Throwback Tuesday! Selfridges

This time last year I had just been interning with Selfridges' VM department, and helping them create their Christmas displays. I think this was a good experience for me in terms of showing me what I'm really interested in. I came into the process a little too late I think, and missed the creative designing part, which would have made me feel more involved. Spray-painting the trees gold and doing the actual crafting of pieces for the window displays was really lovely as it reminded me of stage design work I'd done in the past, but as with most voluntary jobs there were dull tasks. I didn't get to help at all with the main window displays, as they probably weren't sure of my capabilities, which did leave me stringing up fairy lights and 'fluffing' fake Christmas trees in the store, occasionally on my own. Personally I find working in a large company less rewarding than for a small team, but it might have taken me longer to realise this had I not tried volunteering for Selfridges.

Saturday Club Workshops

I'm currently planning 2 workshop sessions for MMU's Saturday Art Club in the new year. I volunteered with NADSC last academic year and over the summer. It's a nationwide initiative run by the Sorrell Foundation, which seeks to inspire creativity in young people. Last summer they had stalls at both weeks of New Designers and there are Saturday Clubs all over the country now. It's doing really well and seems to be growing from strength to strength so I'm always so happy to be involved in volunteering or running the workshops.

The workshops I'm involved in during January are based on a 4 week programme of papercraft. I'm planning one workshop based on a similar activity session I ran last year, which encourages the SatClubbers to create their own storyboards, shadow puppets and scenery for a shadow puppet theatre. Two weeks later they'll be creating artist books (concertinas, pop-up and pocket books) with me, after having been inspired by Special Collections the previous weekend.
More news on this in the New Year.

Jazz site

Over the summer I did some assisting work for film maker, Antony Barkworth-Knight on the Manchester Jazz Festival and he's just made a lovely little site talking about the project and who was involved. My first professional animation job has some official accreditation, and hopefully this will lead to some future festivals being interested in showing the film!

The Evolution: Seeds and Streams site

 

 

 

Origami Penguins

I've recently worked two days with Antony Barkworth-Knight on his latest project for the Manchester based band, Go Go Penguin. We're creating some visuals for the band's tour which will be projected behind them on stage. This is Antony's project so he's running the show and doing all the film work, but he's had me in studio creating various origami paper shapes for the content. 
These visuals correspond to the music video he made for Go Go Penguin's new album, so they have a cohesive look for the tour. Although, he's gone for more variety in the paper constructions he's had me making, and I've been developing geometric and organic structures rather than following traditional origami techniques of creating recognisable shapes such as animals. 
I've been experimenting with a variety of folds, modular pattern making, different types of paper and using scored lines and slices to create 3D paper models. 
I'm reliving the Paper Structures module in Art Foundation and it's been rather lovely to spend two days remembering all those techniques and inventing new ones. 

This video is the work Antony did for Go Go Penguin's new album and the premise upon which we've been working for the new tour visuals.

Artists Assemble!

YES!!! The Turner Prize has been won this year by a group who do not necessarily conform to the traditional notion of being artists, but have made arts part of the community. Lovely to see so much going on in terms of the social benefits of art lately and finding more and more people are using creative thinking to tackle community issues. They are not separate entities at all. Art does have the power to change things!
And all under the age of 30, making them the youngest winners of the Turner Prize ever. How wonderful. And for a project in my local area. I'm liking it even more.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/07/turner-prize-2015-assemble-win-by-ignoring-art-market

"Oh GOSH, Wellcome to London!"

(Apologies for my title... I'm just a sucker for puns.)

So, I went to London on Friday to conduct an interview with Isobel, the Arts Coordinator at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), in order to ask her a few questions about the programme she runs and her Hands On animation project from a few years ago. It was a brief little interview, but she was very helpful in answering all my questions about the role of arts therapy in GOSH, and her thoughts about visual aids in explaining complex concepts to young children. I learnt some really cool things about how they tackle the complexity of explaining conditions to kids, and how they're always developing new ways to approach the care they provide.

Because of the brevity of my interview, I had some time to explore London and The British Museum. Isobel mentioned the work The Wellcome Trust does in bringing together the arts and sciences, and interestingly enough there was an exhibition curated by them in the museum. The main artwork featured a gallery-length installation of two pieces of material, into which were sewn every drug/pill/capsule taken by a man and a woman in their lifetimes. The piece was called Cradle to Grave by Pharmaecopia, and was an interesting representation of the 'average person's' use of the NHS system. Seeing it in a visual format rather than numerically or written really made the amount of drugs consumed rather surprising, it was much more than I would have anticipated.

 

The Doodle Evolution

I'm submitting an alternative presentation for my dissertation, which will consist of a spoken essay that has animated accompaniments (an animated essay?). For my topic I've been researching the effects of illustration and animation on learning, and this has led to further research into how children learn through the act of drawing. I'm currently reading a great little book called "Artful Scribbles", which analyses how children's psychology, communication and visual skills all develop simultaneously through the act of 'scribbling' or 'doodling'. I've discussed this in previous blog posts, but the basic trajectory is that a child begins with scribbling and develops their motor function skills through a process of meandering lines, to near-perfect circles, to 'tadpole men', to characterised figures (with some other stops in between).

This process is similar in every child, in the same way that communication skills develop similarly in toddlers, and it made me think of how evolution is often portrayed in a similar way; through a series of milestones to represent the constant process. I decided to animate the evolution of children's doodles to accompany my essay.

On a practical note, I made this animation without the use of pegbars and cameras, and chose instead to go with standard A4 paper over a lightbox (to aline properly I just use the edge of the lightbox as a set square guide). I then bulk scanned the sheets using our uni printers, which saves hours overall and gives a really clean, flat finish. No messing around with camera settings or alignment, and every scan is numbered so as long as they're all in order and the right way round then this saves so much time and faff. Future studio goals now include a printer like this.

 

"Crowding out the Arts" - the EBacc

So, there's been a shift in the education system in Britain since September in the form of a compulsory EBacc for secondary school students (consisting of core subjects English, Maths, Science, a language and history or geography). Noting the distinct lack of an art or design subject anywhere in that list? Yup, me too. What a disgrace!
What's even more of a disgrace is what Nicky Morgan (education secretary) said on the subject:

“if you wanted to do something, or even if you didn’t know what you wanted to do, then the arts and humanities were what you chose because they were useful for all kinds of jobs”, but that “we know now that couldn’t be further from the truth – that the subjects that keep young people’s options open and unlock the door to all sorts of careers are the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths)”.

How wonderful to see that in 2015 our govt. are finally stepping away from the one-size-fits-all approach to education! Oh wait...

What's even more of a travesty is how woefully uneducated our 'education secretary' seems to be on the growth of the Arts Sector throughout the most recent recession, something you can find out through the direct.gov website, if you could be bothered to educate yourself...

Key findings include:

• GVA (gross value added) of the Creative Industries was £71.4 billion in 2012 and accounted for 5.2 per cent of the UK Economy.
• GVA of the Creative Industries has increased by 15.6 per cent since 2008, compared with an increase of 5.4 per cent for the UK Economy as a whole.
• GVA of the Creative Industries increased by 9.4 per cent between 2011 and 2012, higher than for any of the other main UK industry sectors.
• The Creative Industries accounted for 1.68 million jobs in 2012, 5.6 per cent of the total number of jobs in the UK.
• Employment in the Creative Industries increased by 8.6 per cent between 2011 and 2012 a much higher rate than for the UK Economy as a whole (0.7%).
• The value of services exported by the Creative Industries was £15.5 billion in 2011, 8.0 per cent of total UK service exports.
• Between 2009 and 2011 the value of service exports from the Creative Industries increased by 16.1 per cent. This compares with an increase of 11.5 per cent for total UK service exports. 

Having just been involved in a Design Academy programme that drove forward the idea that 'design thinking' or 'creative thinking' or 'lateral thinking', whatever you want to call it, is possibly the most sought after commodity employers are now looking for in their potential employees industry-wide; I think it's a crying shame that our schooling system is not making room for the development of these skills. Especially as, during said programme, I was taught that my skills were not limited to aesthetic design, but actually that I could use them to target social issues (something I'm sure is not included as part of the 'Creative Industries' per se mentioned in the govt. stats above).  I am in no way arguing that the Arts are more beneficial than the Sciences or Humanities, but rather that denying they have any worth at all in the working world is ignorant.

The biggest, most lucrative companies in the world such as Google and Apple have specialists and technicians yes, but they also hire whole departments of designers, because their companies are run on innovation and they have been smart enough to realise the worth of such people and skills. It's argued that the best ideas and innovations come from subject cross-divides. How can that ever happen if everyone is brought up learning the exact same skills?  

If you want even more reasons why an arts-deficient education system is set to fail our youth then Philip Pullman has some wonderful things to say about educating human beings rather than robots in this article from The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/20/philip-pullman-barbarian-arts-education-english-baccalaureate

Basically I'd just like to say, "Fuck off Nicky Morgan, and go do your homework." Rant over.  

The Bobs

YSP are playing host to an exhibition by Bob and Roberta Smith at the moment, which is a response to their National Arts Education Archive (I might need to check both of these things out!). Bob and Roberta Smith is a campaign artist who delves largely into social and political issues using typography and protest posters as the main form. The messages are simple and clear and I just thought that these works in particular are so closely linked to my essay about learning through illustration and animation.

Part 4 of The Reedy Boy

So I've finally finished the massive Arts Council funded project, The Reedy Boy. I've loved every minute of working with such a lovely pair of talented guys. I think without such hardworking, supportive people around me I wouldn't have managed to get over 45 minutes of hand-drawn animation produced in just under three months. It's been a crazy level of commitment, and the learning curve has been steep as anything. In this last week I've learnt how to mask videos, composite photographic elements with hand-drawn images, create sunbeams and glowing fire embers in After Effects, composite real film and digital animation in with hand-drawn animation... to name just the things I'm most proud of/are most useful for the future.
Anyway, here's Part 4, The Final Chapter, The Finale, The End.

Sneak Peeks

I thought I'd show a little sneaky peek of the final part of my collaborative animation project, The Reedy Boy. This was an animated scene that I edited some more before including in the final film, but I think it's quite sweet and pretty as it is. Never animated snow before. I only discovered afterwards that I could have used the After effects snow simulation to achieve this blizzard but I quite like that I drew the snowflakes myself, maybe in the future I'll combine the two techniques if I have to create a snow scene again. 
Part 4 of The Reedy Boy comes out tonight on Youtube!

Sketchbook Throwback

Leafing to the back of an old notebook to try and find a spare bit of paper to scribble on, I came across this drawing and note from the summer. I thought about making myself a collection/encyclopedia of 'How Shit Moves', so that whenever I learn how to animate a specific movement, walk sequence etc, then I won't forget. Now this all seems far too organised for me, but maybe it's a little & often side project that slowly fills out to become my ultimate animation guide. Think I got this idea from my flatmate's methodology and process files for her Textiles in Practice course. Collaboration comes to the rescue yet again! 

Experiments with doodles

I've been learning all about how children's drawings develop recently; reading a book called Artful Scribbles which examines the process and psychology associated with it. I'm currently animating the progression using a single, continuous line style that morphs from a squiggle to meandering lines, to a circle etc. I love the shapes and lines more and more now, they're like the basic building blocks for all drawings. I've been trying to find ways to combine them into my animation as an added layer of texture/interest/symbolism. 

I attempted a couple of combinations of figures and patterns, using the claire house color scheme (although I think these hues are just a bit too vibrant, and I'll lean towards a more pastel scheme for the animation itself). This is one of them (plus a close-up), which I thought could maybe hint at the worry/stress experienced by the parents after a child is diagnosed. I thought using the child's own squiggles and visual language was an interesting and alternative way to this, rather than necessarily relying on facial expressions all the time. These were done in gouache paints and black fineliner pen. 

Design Academy

Had a wonderful trip down to London yesterday to present to the Design Council our pitch for the Design for Care challenge. Was really rather nerve-wracking but somehow we managed to make a great impression and my team were offered a Special Commendation for our pitch! We were given these cute little certificates that reminded me of primary school. Gonna put mine on the fridge! 

I did actually learn a lot on this programme though and it's made me more aware of the employment options available to me when I leave uni. I guess I'd never really thought of myself as a 'Designer' and instead just as someone who draws and animates, but actually all the creative thinking practices I've learnt and developed over the course have given me the brain of a designer/creative problem solver/lateral thinker. 
The programme has definitely made me realise how much I can do to help solve social problems or make a difference, even if I sometimes still feel like I 'just draw'. I'm really happy that there seems to be a place for creative alternatives to problem-solving, because it fits so well with what I'm learning about for my dissertation too. I think I can find a way to make a change and still include my animation practice in the future. 

Design for Care

For the past two weeks I've been working on a Design Academy brief titled, "How can we help people stay independent for as long as possible?", and I've been collaborating with 3 other girls from the School of Art to try and design a solution using creative and lateral thinking processes. It's been really interesting to see how a design course such as illustration could lead me down a path to problem-solving for the care industry. 

This has linked very well with everything that I've already been looking at in my dissertation research and my authorship project for Claire House Hospice. I've realised in the past few months that I don't want to just create something that is all about aesthetics, I want there to be a deeper social context to everything I do. All my dissertation title might claim differently, I'm aware that illustration or art alone can't change the world, but I do think it can genuinely help people. 

It can do this in more than just the obvious NPO/care/community services driven way as well. I've always been friends with people in bands and have a list of ever-growing music videos to complete; of which one is an EP based around the topic of depression. People find solace in all sorts of places; in music, art, conversation, or in the hope of my Design Academy team, in community-led garden projects. 

Focus on the fun

When making something so emotionally charged as an animation for a children's hospice charity, it seems to be really important to be able to acknowledge the full range of human emotions. This film needs to be empathetic, but in doing so I need to be able to find the fun. Claire House is a place for families and children to feel safe and supported and receive care, but also a place to embrace the joys of childhood and parenthood, however fleeting it may be.

Being an animation student, I regularly find myself having been sat hunched over a lightbox for long periods of time and needing to get up and move. When this happens I normally refer to it as the need for a "30 second dance party", and a few months ago I decided to capture it in animated form.
This is the kind of thing that I need to focus on with the family I am assigned to; their quirks and jokes, their ways of finding the joy in the small moments shared together, all their little ways of being human and happy and together, because Claire House doesn't have a one-size fits all approach to their work, and neither do I. I want to make this as much about the family themselves as about the work Claire House do.

The Penultimate Chapter

Part 3 of The Reedy Boy, my collaborative animated film project with Andy Hickmott and Jay Birbeck, funded by Arts Council England has been released!

Creating what will be over 45 minutes of hand-drawn animated film set to poetry in less than 3 months, alongside university work has proven to be rather strenuous, but I can't believe how much I've learnt and how much more confident I have become technically by working to such a tight deadline. It's been a lovely experience to work with a talented writer and composer as well and see how the style of things develop when you have several creative voices working together. I might even miss this once it's all over and I've caught up on sleep...

Beautiful oils

What can I say, except that this is just bloody lovely.

Oils on glass stop-frame animation for The Jezabels. So much atmosphere and depth in each frame, and really showing a knowledge of the history and technique behind oil painting by utilising it's translucency and slow drying rate to the advantage of a stop-frame animation over light. I love the chiascuro quality of the whole film and its constant flicker. It feels full of life, which is the entire point of the song.

Animation for good

Just Tuna is an animated film made for Greenpeace to inform shoppers that they should know exactly what they are buying and the industries and companies they are supporting. John West's sister company Thai Union is guilty of using unsustainable fishing methods and violating human rights through the exploitation of their workers and by contributing to the human trafficking industry. 

Again, it seems that a charity has chosen to use animation to spread awareness because they are aware of it's novelty, that people will appreciate the artistry of the film and perhaps then inadvertently also learn something and spread the message. It also seems that when tackling difficult social issues such as human trafficking, abuse and the death of marine life, animation provides a forum that can delve deeper than live-action film would be able to. It enables a sense of empathy that might not be achieved through a generic documentary-style film. 

In terms of visual language, the monochrome colour scheme and simple lines add to the narrative. They don't make it fussy or too 'pretty' because Greenpeace want to deliver facts, not just a story about tuna in nice animated packaging. 
That said, there are some really beautiful transitions in the film, such as the bars of a jail becoming the barcode on the side of the tin of tuna - a very simple, clear link between the act of buying and consuming to the atrocities committed by the company. 

The Reedy Boy - Part 2

As promised, Part 2 of the four-part animated fable, The Reedy Boy, is now available to watch on youtube! This is my first professional role as an animator and I've already learnt so much from the experience, and from the musician and poet I've collaborated with. Can't beat working with lovely, talented people, and having the support and backing of Arts Council England!

Do schools kill creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson is an educationalist with some interesting insights into the issues behind modern day eduction systems. He claims that modern day schooling stunts creativity by putting an emphasis on the more 'academic' subjects like maths, science and english, rather than the 'creative' subjects like dance, drama and art. 
This week I've been taking part in Design Academy, a programme that instills design strategies into students so they can theoretically tackle any problem, regardless of their existing knowledge on the topic, because they know how to use design to work around the issue. Creativity is apparently the biggest skill set that employers now look for in their applicants because it allows them to problem solve more effectively and think more laterally. Whereas, Sir Ken Robinson says that our current schooling is formed on the premise that we will need skills in maths, literacy and science because it is based on an out-dated model of industry from the Victorian era. 

These three talks highlight both Ken's ideas about education, and the benefits of being a 'multipotentialite' rather than a specialist (something that most schools do not currently embrace). 

Lupus films: behind the magic

When thinking of creating a hand-drawn, coloured pencil animation, it would be a massive oversight not to consider the adaptations of Raymond Briggs' story, The Snowman from the 1980s, and its more recent sequel, The Snowman and The Snowdog made by Lupus Films, based in Shoreditch, London. This animation company specialises in 2D hand-rendered animation, but brings it into the modern day by compositing traditional hand-drawn images with digitally rendered bases and after effects skills in editing. This standard of production is most definitely not a solo project, but it's good to be inspired!

This is the only company I'm currently aware of who embrace the 2D traditional techniques so intensely, but it's working for them. They're about to start production of another Raymond Briggs adaptation, Ethel and Ernest, which looks just as beautiful and true to the original illustrative style as The Snowman and The Snowdog was. Lupus Films' website hosts a video link of the making of the snowdog, which has some slightly awe-inspiring and unexpected insights into how a film like this goes through production. Definitely there are some technical and process practices that I could adopt in my own work from this studio's approach. http://www.lupusfilms.com/productions 

The level of collaboration and trust on this project is really lovely. In terms of career aims, a studio like this would be my dream after graduation, because the years of experience under one roof would give invaluable insider advice to a newbie like myself. By way of technical skill I always think that praxis (the learn-by-doing approach) is the best way to pick up a new skill quickly, and in a studio like Lupus, I can't imagine there being a lack of teachers. Something to aim for indeed!

Maow Nobrow

Back on the topic of non-fiction literature made more accessible for children through illustration, Nobrow Press have released a book called Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of Space! Prof. Astro Cat also has an app which allows children to take part in his animated adventures through space and time. The book and app serve to teach kids about gravity, extra-terrestrial life and time in an entertaining way. Dr. Dominic Walliman and Ben Newman seem keen to break down the preconceived ideas that science and art are not compatible and that learning needs to be dull and structured on the Victorian school model.

The Astro Cat book has a beautiful set of infographics, with cute characters to give it a story-like element and plenty of illustrated facts to help children retain the information. The book, like most of Nobrow's publications it is printed so that it feels personal and more like a treasured possession than simply a mass-produced publication to sit on the shelf and eventually end up in a car boot sale. Nobrow Press' attention to detail in the publication makes the knowledge inside the book feel like what it is; a very precious commodity, and Ben Newman's illustrations bring life to the facts in a way that combines the arts and sciences seemingly seamlessly. The book is something to be cherished and the app brings Astro Cat into the modern age.

Stop, Look, Listen, Live

Talking to people my age about animated public information safety ads has brought up lots of cute films from my childhood, such as the hedgehog road safety adverts. I think everyone remembers these years later because of the combination of animation and song; they clearly made an impression on our young minds in the 90s, meaning they did their job well! The animation is simple and quite basic in comparison to other animated film from the time, but the animated form clearly drew kids in. I remember singing along and loving the hedgehogs as a small child, and I know my mum cashed in on the idea by reminding me at roadsides to remember 'what the hedgehogs would do'.
This kind of source material is something that reiterates what I'm thinking about with my dissertation research... that illustration/animation offers a gateway and a medium to educate children outside the standard classroom, learn-by-rote system. The style of drawings themselves actually work so well I think because they are simplistic enough for a child to copy easily, possibly making them more relatable. Roman Mars hits the nail on the head when he talks about the important qualities of design in general by focussing on flags. He discusses how the best flags are kept so simple as to be replicated by a child, and I think this is a design principle to stand by when your target audience is children!

 

 

Keeping things simple

This advert for Olay keeps you focussed and tells a story all with a single line. Kind of genius...

Obviously not as easy as it looks, keeping things simple and taking everything down to its basic form means that that form has to be done perfectly. I love this because it focusses on movement and plays with all the basics of animation. It shows how much you can achieve without piling lots of visual information onto the screen. Reminds me of Frederic Bach's films for some reason... perhaps the style of movement? But also Picasso's simplified line drawings of animals.

The playful quality of this is something that would work really well for my Claire House film. A sense of fun and looseness relates to my idea of using the children's own drawings.

The Reedy Boy - Part 1

So very, very, very excited to announce that Part 1 of the collaborative animated film I've been working on, The Reedy Boy, is now available on youtube! I've been working on it round the clock for the last two months, as the entire set of films will be over 40 minutes long (not including additional trailers made for the series), and our team has been miniscule; just me, a musician (Jay Birbeck) and the poet of the original story (Andy Hickmott). As we are all students, our time and funds have been precious and few, and I can't thank Arts Council England and Manchester Metropolitan University enough for their support of the project!
Parts 2,3 and 4 due for release over the course of the month.

Charley Says...

Can't believe I forgot about these absolute gems when researching public information films and animations with messages for children! The Charley Says films were a series of cut-out animation shorts designed to inform children about staying safe. They were aired during the 1970s and 80s, during my parents era of growing up Maybe my parents thought they were effective and showed them to us while we were growing up too, because the 'Charley Says' quote has been a long-running pop-culture reference in my family. 

Anyway, these are brilliant. Very simple and clear, and using a cute (slightly deranged) cat to get kids on board. 
London's Central Office of Information knew how to get kids interested... show them a funny cat video. 
I also found a funny adapted version for 'modern day advice', probably aimed at the adults who used to watch Charley as a child.

The original Charley Says films

Satirical remake for the Modern Technological Age

More abstract animation

I've been messing around with some marking making abstractions for animation, whilst I wait to be introduced to the family I'll be working with. There's little directional drawing/designing I can do right now before I know what their story is and get to know them. I do know that I'd like to incorporate some abstract elements though, focusing on just colour, shape and movement, so I've been experimenting with this alongside life drawing. I really like the texture that comes from using graphite, and I'm starting to think that I need to branch out from my original concept of coloured pencils/watercolours for this film and consider the textural benefits that will come from using things like pastels as well (although pastels do pose the challenge of transport, this would probably have to all be made and photographed immediately in studio to avoid unwanted smudges) ((although sometimes smudges and accidents make the best marks...))

Thinking about abstraction and simplicity

Over the summer I interned on a moving image production with Antony Barkworth-Knight for the Manchester Jazz Festival. From this collaboration I found that minimalism and abstraction of ideas to their most basic forms could be really captivating and beautiful. There was a mesmeric quality to some of the flowing lines and shapes which we animated and I loved the animated lines Antony created from a day of mark-making together using paint and graphite. Antony taught me that when you boiled everything down to line, shape and tone, it could be really exciting because then everything is about the movement, colour and texture of the image.


I made these samples when we first started talking about lines 'having a conversation', and then Antony animated some captivating sequences of squiggles/doodles/basic lines reacting to each other and developing. My later versions of the two lines 'dancing' which made it into the final show alongside other work like more figurative bird animations, is still something I'm really proud of and continues to be an idea I develop from. I keep coming back to this idea that moments of abstraction, rather than being fillers, act as palette cleansers. They keep you intrigued and focused, and I've found this across the board when dealing with narrative, not just in animation.

 

A Monster Calls

"The monster showed up after midnight. As they do.

But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming…

This monster is something different, though. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth."

This young adult fiction novel by Patrick Ness is something that I'm very interested in with regards to broaching the subject of death among children.Obviously by working with a children's hospice for my current animation, the subject is constantly there. The Claire House team want me to focus on the uplifting and encouraging aspects of their work and not dwell on the topic of a child being taken too soon, but I think it is important for me to see how other illustrators and authors have tackled the issue in order to be aware, even if I will not face the challenge fully myself. It's interesting to see that books like, A Monster Calls and The Dark have emerged in recent years. Perhaps, in an age where children have access to the internet and all the information it has to offer, and some would argue that childhood innocence is lost earlier; this honest and straightforward approach to tackling fears is the better option, rather than skirting around the issues?

Into the Woods...

I recently discovered the Modern Love column from New York Times and became infatuated with it. The column is created by the general public who send in essays about all sorts of love and relationships, and the troubles/joys that accompany them. Some of the essays featured are transformed into animated shorts, and 'Into the Woods' is one of my favourites for its beautiful simplicity. 
The design choice to make the characters abstract, gracefully dancing shapes, defined by their different colours, works well. I feel like this is an example of storytelling and animation in harmony, as the animation compliments the speaker rather than distracting the viewer from the original story. In a way, it feels like the animator has approached the voiceover like it was a musical composition; highlighting the peaks of the story, the rhythm of her voice and the tone in general. The transitions and abstractions are seamless and I think this is what attracted me to the animation so much. It's gentle, understated but ultimately moving and memorable. 

First Step

The NSPCC and Childline have really embraced the idea that animation can help tackle sensitive, upsetting or difficult issues. In 'First Step', an animation made to show that Childline are there for children suffering from sexual abuse, the use of written words on screen instead of a voice really strengthens the message that the calls are private and kept that way. The minimalism and use of text in this animation really draws you in and allows you to focus on the message and empathy in the conversation between the caller and Childline.

The Childline text is simple, clear and strong, emphasising the grounding nature a call to Childline can have for a child in need. In contrast to the occasionally unclear, fractured nature of the child's phrases, Childline's solidity and constancy is a visual metaphor for reassurance. The font itself emanates calmness and stability, without seeming cold - a very considered and effective choice. It's the small design choices that can make a big difference here, as these fonts are representing people in the absence of faces or voices.

I like the story arc of this animation as well. There is a clear progression through very limited imagery cleverly used to show the supportive effect of Childline. The words and phrases become more coherent and the imagery becomes more complex and less fractured. It's a beautifully subtle piece of animation that tells a story in a concise but very sensitive and empathetic manner.

Seems I'm onto something...

The NSPCC already have several animated films/documentaries to discuss difficult stories and highlight the help their charity provides for children in the UK. This must be an effective tool as there is a new one, Pete's Story animated by Daniel Bruson. Again it also seems that the hand-drawn, tactile approach is one that works very well for this type of subject matter as this animation took five months of hand-painting every frame in watercolour and then digitally compositing it all together. Perhaps this is because it make the viewer feel more involved in the story. I tend to think that even if someone is not an expert in art or animation, they can still tell that a lot of effort and time has gone into something like this, which holds their focus more, it generates a respect for the piece and I think it's important to have that when trying to get a message across. 

Pete's Story is visually STUNNING. I'm fairly certain that each individual frame could be work of art in it's own right, but the transitions and the fluidity of the animation is incredible. I really think the chiaroscuro technique works well with this story as it leaves room for some ambiguity in the scenes that are more traumatic, and highlight the darkness in Pete's life at that time. 

https://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/108303152

Notes on the film in it's vimeo account:

"Winner at D&AD Awards 2015. dandad.org/awards/professional/2015/film-advertising-crafts/24792/petes-story/

Pete's Story is a true account of a boy that suffered from his mother's violence over his childhood years in the UK. NSPCC and Lovers invited me to create this frame by frame watercolour ink animation to communicate the story’s haunting and delicate atmosphere.

NSPCC is the leading children's charity in the UK and is widely known for its long fight for childhood protection. The film was used to reach out potential donors and to create awareness among young people about child abuse and what NSPCC can do to help.

The idea was to convey a mixture of fear, solitude and the imminence of violence confined inside this labyrinthic house, in contrast with the green touch points that show potential (but unused, in this case) interfaces between Pete and NSPCC. I worked five months to create this watercolour animation frame by frame, on paper, and then compose it digitally in post production. I’ll be posting a making of soon.

Special thanks to Alex Ostrowski and Ally Carter for their trust, motivation and support."

The Reedy Boy

I'm currently working on something completely different to my uni work, which is being funded by Arts Council England and is a very exciting collaborative project with a poet and musician. We are creating a 4 part film using Andy Hickmott's poem, 'The Reedy Boy', for which I am developing the accompanying animations and Jay Birbeck is producing the sound and music. 

It's a really dark, folksy story about a man called Glen Fenny who falls foul of the Reedy Boy. 
Watch the trailer here:

Before Pooh there was a war...

E. H. Shepard is world-renowned for his delightful illustrations for A.A. Milne's 'silly old bear', Pooh, but before he became famous for creating the childhood symbol, he was an accomplished illustrator of difficult subject matter. During the First World War, Shepard drew his fellow soldiers far from home and their loved ones, and managed to capture not only the horrors of war with his draftsmanship, but also the camaraderie and humour shared by the men. Whilst I began looking at Shepard's work because of the themes of childhood and innocence in his Christopher Robin sketches as preparation for my work with a children's hospice, it is actually his war illustrations which have inspired me.

Over the next few months I will be tackling sensitive and challenging subject matter in my collaboration with Claire House, and Shepard's approach in his illustrations seems to me to be a balancing act. He weighs humour and tenderness against the sharp realities of war, which gives a far more insightful and rounded reference of his human experience during WW1 than if he had chosen to give either end of the spectrum more importance. I think my work will need to be about balance too. I want my animation for the hospice to be informative, but still display the joy and support that Claire House provides for its families. I want it to be heart-warming, but not sickly sweet.

It's the small gestures that gives Shepard's work it's authenticity, like the other illustrators and animators I have researched, he finds that nod to a person's character, such as the tilt of a head or the position of their feet (even if that person's a bear).

This war illustration is my favourite I think. The soldier on the left has been blinded and is asking the other to read the letter from 'his girl' to him. There's friendship here, a tenderness in the thought that he is loved back home, and also humour in the request that 'as it's rather private will you please stuff some cotton wool in your ears while ya read it?'