Weekend in the attic

test 1




test 2

Spent the bank holiday weekend experimenting with animation techniques in an attic. Got messy mixing traditional materials – charcoal, paint, crayon, tipp-ex (!) – with photographic material. I've posted up two of the tests.
I’m getting stuck back into working as the animator on an installation in the woods that tells a narrative through the use of early optical and animation devices- Zoetropes, Thaumatropes, Phenakistoscope- basically giving all the tropes and the scopes a ride. Working with these kinds of devices necessitates a lot of simple looping animations, like the Test 2 charcoal run cycle. I'm developing the look of the character at present and am working on an underground burrow structure for her to live in.

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

Paring down

I've always liked the 1 minute pose. As well as the obvious bonus that... well... it only takes one measly minute, I often find the result more interesting than a 20 minute pose that has been fussed over. There's no time for the brain to intervene and ask the dreaded question "is this good?"- you've just got to get on with it and capture the life and drama of a pose immediately.
Paring down - a good way to proceed.

Super 8 in the Woods

I want to get a really grainy, celluloid look for some new development work I'm doing on "Off the Path", so got out the ol’ Super 8 camera and shot a few cartridges in Stanmer Park, the site the project will be installed in. Just got the developed film back- love the colour.
If Michael Apted’s “Nell” had been set in the English countryside, it would have probably looked a bit like this. Chicka, chicka, chickabee...