Puffin, Tadpole & Platypus

I made 3 little monoprints for my brother and Harry.

I havn't added many postings recently, I'm sorry if you looked and there was nothing new here. I blame Damages, plus a little bit of plot maintenance, and a few workshops at the Barbican and NPG.














Here we are eating all the tomatoes before they get home.

Little two page animations

This week pupils at Gayhurst Community School made some lovely two page animations on an abstract theme with Emily Tracy and me.

Big news flash!

If you have a low spell at your desk you can see the aforementioned 'The Making of a Tiger Suit' on the Scottish Sun website today. Two of the animations are in the documentary and two are at the end.

K T Tunstall

I'm excited to announce that four little animations that I was commissioned to make are included in 'The Making of a Tiger Suit', a documentary made to accompany the delux version of K T Tunstall's new album Tiger Suit out in the UK on Monday. I think people are already whistling along to (Still a) Wierdo. It was just about my first foray into the grubby world of commercial work and it was great, thanks to the extremely nice KT. Bring it on I say. Give me a call P Diddy I'll flush the loo once more. Spellbound is ready.

LIAF cont...

I didn't want to miss out on noting down some other favourites from the festival this year.. One was Silas Money's RCA film Self Service in which flashing frames of supermarket food stuffs create a narrative that doesn't quite travel a linear path, it was vital and intuitively made, no fuss. The whole of the British Showcase was strong this year, Tramdeutung, Matter Fisher, Txt Island, The Eagleman's Stag and Zbigniev's Cupboard were all especially impressive. It's exciting to think that there are so many new British filmmaker's setting sail.

The Direct to Film showcase was a little bit disappointing, the works often lacked structure and some really missed a trick by not screening a film print. Apart from the crazy Dialogues by Ulo Pikkov, I liked Judith Poirier's Dialogue, sound and image made with letraset, but it couldn't live up to the extraordinary Dresden Dynamo made by Lis Rhodes in 1971. Admittedly all the competition films were butted up against Steven Woloshen's mini retrospective and the historical classics, and this undoubtedly gave them a disadvantageous context.

















Steven's films are both masterful and playful, and really joyful to watch. He really works with his sound tracks, which are mostly grand or jazzy and suit projection in the cinema extremely well. Steven is also a generous filmmaker and spread's the word about cameraless film wherever he travels. His book Recipes for Reconstruction can be bought directly from him, and I would advise it if you're interested in doing some experiments with celluloid. Like me. It was brilliant to see the historical classics in the cinema, all 5 of them, but especially Caroline Leaf's Two Sisters from 1991. I think you could learn everything there is to know about animation from Caroline Leaf's wonderful body of work.
More later I hope.

Best of the Fest LIAF

I've made it through my first film festival juror experience, I enjoyed it alot because of the very lovely other jury members (see previous post), Nag and Malcom, the quality of the films and the nice red wine at the Renoir. I'm sure it's on the LIAF www but we gave our Best of the Fest prize to Angry Man by Anita Killi and Best British Film to Joseph Pierce's film Family Portrait.
Below are some blurry photographs in which you can see us conveying our results to Nag and splendid Malcom Turner, Nag and Malcom on the sofa, and Linda McCarthy on the microphone introducing her film The Grand Easter Egg Hunt amongst the other filmmakers in the British Animation programme. Have a look at Linda's animations, she makes puppets with ceramic parts, animating them using the replacement technique.
We all liked the two films mentioned above very much of course, but there were many other excellent films in the competition programme too, films from Estonia, the NFB and the RCA largely dominating. So we gave some honourable mentions too. Runaway by Cordell Barker has completely exquisite comic timing, to the frame. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen for a second and I could watch it 10 more times with ease. I'm a huge fan of Tad's Nest by Petra Freeman, I enjoy it every time I see it, it's so eerie and I love the way the scale changes, and the scuttling noises (amongst other things). Ines Sedan's The Man who Slept was another thought provoking wopper from the NFB, a really good, engaging narrative with a lovely ending. Bellies by Phillippe Grammaticopolous, was a wonderful follow up to his earlier film The Regulator (2005), the same spare white environment representing a moment of judgement or epiphany and this is a film that judges and punishes big fat capitalists with tiny hands. I've run out of time today, but I have a few more personal favourites to mention.

LIAF

This week, as previously mentioned, I'm attending all the competitive programmes at LIAF with my fellow jurors, seen below in the midst of a dry and serious debate. You can see the great animator Laurie Hill, Film London's Anna Faithfull and the festival's special guest from Canada, Steven Woloshen. This year's programme seems very strong so far, and I'm really enjoying seeing so many films in one go, and having the chance to discuss them in fine company. Discretion prevents me from mentioning topics of our debate at this juncture, perhaps you could get a ticket for Best of the Fest (quickly) and you'll be able to find out what we thought.

Pleasure Gardens

Upstaged

I enjoy painting portraits of pets for friends and family (only) and I was very pleased with my portrait of Toby for my mother in law, until George showed me his one, rustled up in a matter of minutes, so full of beans.

LIAF

The London International Animation Festival starts today - hooray! I shall wash and find my raincoat and set off there forthwith. I am lucky this year because I am on duty as a juror and I think that means watching almost all the programmes and a free cobra beer. I'm sure I'll have a bit to say about it all afterwards.

We're home again, a bit dusty and tired. What a trip we had!

The Alpujarra's

I wanted to make a tidy connection between my holiday and an earlier post because some of the scenes from Harryhausen's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad were filmed at the Alhambra but I havn't been nearly cool enough to think straight. The Sinbad production was permitted to use the palace grounds in the daylight hours and the volume of tourists meant all interior shots had to be filmed at night.

Anyway for the family members following our progress in Spain (and for others please forgive this interlude) we took to the open road and spent the day in the mountains.

Alhambra Museum

A water trough at the Alhambra Museum showing the common royal motif of ferocious lions attacking their prey.













I think we are going every day Hazel!

Tunnels and rills

at Generalife today


































Come on! I want an ice cream (me)

The Alhambra

Today, at last, we got to the Alhambra, it was really wonderful, despite being a long and dusty and sometimes sticky and cross day for everyone. We have to go back next week because we ran out of time and still havn't been to Generalife.

Sevilla

We have made it to beautiful Seville and back.

Seeking out cool water

Granada

We are on a little trip to Spain this month, it's quite hot, we are just acclimatising.

Animation Deviation (part 2)

Simon Payne, Neil Henderson and Jennifer Nightingale are all lecturers at ARU in Cambridge, and their work is tremendous, each in different ways. Simon Payne's paper was called 'Smooth movement, Frenetic Motion and Flicker', and I would have thought his talk was exciting even if we didn't enjoy marital relations. He showed clips from 'Radio Dynamics' by Oscar Fischinger (1942), 'C-Trend' by Woody Vasulka (1974), 'Peace, Mandala/End War' by Paul Sharits (1993) and David Larcher's 'Ich Tank' (1983/97), in the context of those 3 different ways in which experimental 
film
 and 
video makers 
have
 worked 
with
 frame‐by‐frame
 structures. Then Neil Henderson showed his 16mm film 'Candle' in which movement is created by a chemical process; the 3 minute film is the record of a polaroid photograph appearing from nothing, presented in reverse. It's clever of course, but it's extremely exciting to see the projector projecting the image of a light source that is denied the movement that is expected, I didn't even blink because I didn't want to miss the incremental change when it came, so different to those that Simon mentioned, and I could see that other people felt the same. Neil's made other clever things, one of which is 
Black 
and 
Light
 Movie, 
a 
film 
installation 
of 
sixty
 five super
 8

projectors from 2002. I think I saw this at the 297 Gallery in 2002. Each 
projector 
played a 
50ft
 roll
 of
 black
leader
 until 
it 
ran 
out
 and
 revealed 
the
 illuminated 
frame. Each projector played at it's own speed so there's a great deal of suspense, the light finally arrived but then it signaled the end of the film. Anyway, there's no website for Neil, nothing, so you just have to see if you can catch him showing something sometime. Jennifer Nightingale's work is also thoughtful and thought provoking because the movement in her films is not just or even mechanical but often created by a gesture. In her film 'Pinhole Film No. 1' Jennifer has made a pinhole for the supereight cartridge itself and advanced the film by using a hairgrip, so there is a regular flare of light that is the extended exposure created when Jennifer's hand turns back to revolve the hairgrip again. In her 'Knitting Films' the frames are created from stitches, either the movement of her hand pulling the wool to create a new stitch, or her use of a pattern for a fairisle jersey to dictate the content of each frame. Jenny spoke so well and had some lovely slides to make her process clear, I'm afraid I havn't.

Spellbound breaks out of the bathroom...

and into the bedroom. This week I almost became overwhelmed by tissue paper tigers and was really grateful to Emily Tracy and Wendy Scott from the Skids (pictured with her special scissors) for stepping in and helping me cut some out. I've been making the last of 4 small animations for a DVD that will go with K T Tunstall's lovely new album called Tiger Suit, which will be out in September.
The last part of the project was a splendid day at Fonic doing the sound effects. I quite cleaned them out of chocolate biscuits because I was quite tired.

Esther Leslie

Animation Deviation was organised by Vicky Smith at UWE. There was a smaller turnout than Edinburgh, which was puzzling because it was also excellent. It was opened by a keynote from Esther Leslie, who was so bright, in every way, and talking about lightness as well. Her keynote was a perfect following Animation Evolution I won’t be able to do it justice here because she sort of flies around, but it all makes perfect sense in the end. She mused on liquid crystal displays and the way that the screen collaborates in sort of petrifying or embedding the animation within it’s make-up because there are no flickers or frames, just on and off, lightness and darkness, what she referred to as petrified unrest. That was very interesting to think about because in animation there is much focus on the continuous. She talked about John Gerrard’s animated scenes, it’s the first time I have thought about the way that pig effluent might be animated. Then she talked about saccadian vision; our eyes don’t really look at things smoothly, we scan things more like the second hand of a clock, so what we see is a series of fixed pictures, with the odd blink in there too. Then how did she get on to metamorphosis and Grandville (Jean Isidore Gerard, 1803-46) and the frog he kept on his desk, Mr Cryptogame (see illus.) and the creative possibilities of the wobble or tremble in nanotechnology? This is a layman’s report, I didn't promise anything more.
More later.

Animation Evolution

I've been to Edinburgh for the Society for Animation Studies 22nd Annual Conference. In return for my train ticket I had a small role in a panel about the legacy of Norman McLaren as a previous recipient of the McLaren Award for my film Sawney Beane. The other panellists were Karl McGee, archivist from University of Stirling, and keeper of an archive of McLaren’s letters home, busy animator Iain Gardner and Alan Mason from the animation department at ECA. We were masterfully guided through it all by Jonny Murray also from ECA. It was maybe a little bit long up there on the stage, or did it just feel that way? I think we unanimously agreed that McLaren needed to be feted in Scotland for the centenary of his birth in 2014 and that he was a true pioneer whose huge body of work engendered much gladness. Some interesting observations cropped up about whether it would belittle McLaren to bring him home or make much of his Scottish ness though Iain Gardner has plans to organise a proper celebration and his background would help find money this. Other points that we touched upon were how to introduce him to students (screen often) and how to keep his sensibilities alive at a time where there are many pressures on young animators


















The question of McLaren-like innovation was also posed elegantly by Clare Kitson in her keynote presentation. Her talk contextualised Channel 4’s golden years of animation within the current economic climate. She made the observation that short films that she had seen recently on the festival circuit showed great technical proficiency, but were often indulgent and too long with a certain lack of rigour in the ideas department. She offered a possible explanation that creating animations in the bedroom denies the creators the development structure of a studio and constructive feedback from commissioners and producers. I think this applies especially in the creation of narrative works and I can see the truth in that being a bathroom animator myself. Something that cropped up quite a bit was that current students felt a great pressure to make work for the existing market and this never leads to anything unexpected, innovation is necessarily ahead of public taste. Clare was optimistic about opportunities available with the expansion of broadcasting platforms and development of technology however felt that women directors were falling away from the field, maybe due to this expansion and the emphasis on the development of CGI, games and the production of feature films where women are definitely not so visible. In her period at Channel 4, submissions and commissions had been equally weighted between the genders, so if there are less women directors, it would be a grave backward step.
Obviously Clare could offer no solution, not being culture secretary or a wealthy philanthropist but Joan Ashworth from the RCA said that she felt there was a will to protect the creative industries from the predicted cuts because they are probably our greatest export. I hope that’s the case.

In the single day between the panel and Clare Kitson was a potential of 24 papers of which it was only possible to choose 9. Each person has 20 minutes and they presented in 3’s. I expect this is routine conference structure, I’ll have to go to a second conference before I know for sure. The short presentation time is useful if the presentation is slightly impenetrable but frustrating if the material is engaging and obviously it's often the case that two good things are on concurrently. I especially enjoyed Edwin Carel’s presentation on Chris Marker’s nine lives. Chris Marker prefers to refer to himself as a cobbler but he is known by others as an author, activist, filmmaker, photographer, critic, media artist, poet, journalist and cat lover (is that nine?). Carel’s talk gave us plenty of food for thought which needs cobbling together in the brain because I still need to make the connection between the animated cat named Guilliame, second life and the interval.


















The very engaging David Williams showed a film that he had made called Going to the Dogs, I felt that he had the ability to whoop everyone up and it would have been nice to have heard more from him. Lastly I thought Irina Chiaburu was very interesting on the subject of In the World of Fables by Andrei Khrzhanovsky (1973). She described ways in which the authors of this subversive film found ways to escape censorship in the era of Brezhnev. The presentations and discussions will go on until Sunday, I'm sorry to miss the rest, I bet it will be great.

Waddington Air Show

Animation Evolution & Animation Deviation

There are two conferences about animation coming up in quick succession and I'm lucky enough to be going to both of them. Animation Evolution will take me home to Edinburgh College of Art. I'm joining a panel discussion on the legacy of Norman McLaren. It will be exciting to talk about him in Scotland because he isn't really whooped up as much as he bloody should be, so the whooping starts on friday and I shall let you know how it goes. Next week is Animation Deviation organised by Vicky Smith at UWE. I'm taking my pad and pencil and will make a small report on my return.

Bear

I've been animating a Black Bear in all my spare moments. I've been rotoscoping her using acrylic on a lightbox.

Harryhausen at the BFI

Many, many big guys gathered to pay tribute to Ray Harryhausen at the BFI last night, my favourite two moments were Peter Jackson showing a supereight film of himself and a friend faithfully re-enacting the skeleton sword fighting scene from Jason and The Argonauts (but without being able to work out how to add the skeletons) and a very touching video tribute to Harryhausen from his friend Ray Bradbury, who he has known for seventy years. Harryhausen has been extraordinarily influential to all filmmakers working in fantasy and science fiction filmmaking but seems very gracious and self-effacing too, I've got a long list of films to watch!

Melies to Harryhausen

Last night's talk on the hundred years from Melies to Harryhausen was enlightening for an ignoramus like me and probably interesting to an educated fan too because there was a special flying saucer to see (from Earth Vs The Flying Saucers, 1956) and some personal stories from Tony Dalton, joint author of A century of Model Animation. with Ray Harryhausen. My sister and I didn't watch many films, or much tv when we were young (except John Craven's newsround) and so we missed out on the excitement of films such as Clash of the Titans (1981) and The 7th Voyage of Simbad (1958). I can't wait to see them all one by one. This youtube clip will give a flavour of his extraordinary skill, while I remember other highlights of the talk. Harryhausen is 90 this year, so there is an exhibition at the London Film Museum coming up, and why don't you see if you can get a return ticket for Saturday's Harryhausen birthday celebration at the BFI?

Ray Harryhausen

There are two Harryhausen celebrations at the BFI, one tomorrow and one on Saturday. If you can't come I'll try to post some thoughts here later.