Off the Path Development

test 1




test 2

I spent the bank holiday experimenting with animation techniques in the attic. Got messy mixing traditional materials – charcoal, paint, crayon, tipp-ex – with photographic material. I've posted up two of the tests.

I’m working as an animator for Rachel Henson's Off the Path. It's designed as an installation in the woods of Stanmer Park that tells a narrative through the use of early optical and animation devices- Zoetropes, Thaumatropes, Phenakistoscope- basically, all the tropes and the scopes. Working with these kinds of devices necessitates a lot of simple looping animations.

Happy accident: all the frames of the charcoal run cycle helpfully resolve themselves into a tree….

The Look Of Life

I've always liked the 1 minute pose. As well as the obvious bonus that... well... it only takes one sweet minute, I often find the result more interesting than a 20 minute pose that has been fussed over. There's just no time for the brain to intervene and ask the dreaded question "is this good?"- you have to ride the wave and ask questions after. Finding the painter Cecil Collins' ideas about drawing and spontaneity extremely rich: particularly the exercises drawing with both hands at the same time to short-circuit stale habitual mark-making and open up to life.

Super 8 in Stanmer Park

I want to get a grainy, celluloid look for some new development work I'm doing on Rachel Henson's "Off the Path", so we got out the Super 8 camera and shot a few cartridges in Stanmer Park. The project is developed in relation to this site and Rachel's sense of walking the land as part of the creative process is rich and full of potential. The developed film is back, and I love the colour and depth. There's something of Michael Apted’s “Nell” in some of the shots, though very clearly set in the English countryside.