Thoughts about Clay


















This weekend is Animate the World again at the Barbican Centre. I'm going to be leading workshops in clay, the handling and modelling of which doesn't come naturally to me, so I've been working hard to get to grips with it.
Below is 'Fun in a Bakery Shop', the first clay animation, made by Edwin S. Porter in 1902.







I've been looking at Mio Mao by Francesco Misseri which was first made in 1979 and has been revivied and continued by the Misseri Studios, it can be seen on Milkshake on Channel 5 and Youtube. I hadn't realised that Misseri also worked in paper (QuaqQuao) and sand (A.E.I.O.U) with similarly elegant results. The work is extraordinarily skilled and of course looks effortless, never becoming crumpled and jaded. This is not something that can be said about my work(!) but I can very much relate to his fluid approach to the animation which has the feel of a recording of an encounter between person and the material with nothing else remaining.



I also came across The Amazing Mr Bickford, a video for Frank Zappa by Bruce Bickford in 1987. I managed to see an excerpt and pretty amazing it looks too. I'd very much like to see more and I'll hunt around for a DVD of it. I'd like to lean towards showing films using metamorphosis, to try and provide a tiny counterpoint to the Wallace and Gromit effect.

Print Triennial in Finland

This is a sneak preview of a printmaking project that I have been working on with three other artists. All four of us work were at one time European Pepinieres printmakers- in-residence at the Jyväskylän Graffiikan Paja in Finland. Anna Ruth has organised a lovely project in which we are all starting a small edition and sending one to each artist and so on, until everyone has intervened on each print, The twelve prints will be shown for the first time at the print triennial in Jyväskylä in June 2009.













This is a butterfly print that I made on Joy Gerrard's first image. It has gone to Anna Ruth in Finland and will visit Veronique La Perriere in Canada. I wonder what it will look like when it flies home to Finland again?

Can you spot the difference?

The top photo is from yesterday and the bottom one from an earlier posting.


































Yes, Poppy has been growing bigger but also I've painted the walls. Slowly it's turning into a studio again, though we are having some fun in there first.

Mr Willett's Popular Pottery

In the Brighton and Hove museum I greatly enjoyed Mr Willett's popular pottery collection. His thesis was that "the history of a country may be traced on its homely pottery". In that he was a little bit like Henry Wellcome. Depicted in porcelain and ceramic there were domestic and public scenes of every nature. Here are just two shelves of Mr Willett's treasure - a 1700 delftware fruit dish depicting Mary II and a bone jug featuring George III and Napoleon as The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver.

Paper cinema


















Emily and I went to see King Pest & the Nightflyer by Paper Cinema at the little Angel last night. A lovely illustrator with an old-fashioned beard and an assistant, took his shoes off to present two short stories, one original, one Edgar Allan Poe.
His black ink pen drawings were presented live to a video camera which was projected on a larger screen, sometimes four drawings at once, some very close to the camera, framing and revealing others further away, the auto focus of the camera working hard and my brain too. The methods were all exposed in the music as well, Kora accompanied the story with many different instruments sitting to the right of the stage. My favourite of the two was King Pest, especially the part where two characters are walking a long way together, and everything slows down for a moment. It created a bit of punctuation in the narrative and change of pace that was perhaps missing from Nightflyer, but I still wouldn't have missed going, it was really great.
Thanks Sam for the tip off!

Paper Bag Lady















I was lucky enough to be invited to be the special guest at Paperbaglady in Brighton which is organised by Laura Seymour and Sam McCarthy of Open Book. I hadn't met Sam and Laura before but I said yes as soon as I saw their website because the gingham made me think of cake and I thought they would be good people. I was right, Poppy and I had a really good time, the event has a cabaret feel and everything is carefully thought through. I had an extremely tasty roast dinner and listened to Jane Bartholemew's first set, I liked it very much especially her song 'Ghost'. They screened six women-directed animated short films and afterwards Sam talked a little bit about the films (see picture) and explained why they had chosen them, which made the screening a bit special. They screened two of my films: The Old Man and The Emperor and I answered some questions posed by Sam. It was hard to remember the answers to questions about my practice, I've been on maternity leave for nearly six months now, but it was good to have a professional moment. Thanks to Sam and Laura, see you again one day I'm sure.

Clare Kitson at Pages of Hackney

Poppy and I went up the road to Pages of Hackney to see Clare Kitson talking about her new book 'British Animation - The Channel 4 Factor'. Pages of Hackney is a new, very lovingly-stocked independent bookshop in Clapton and the talk was only £3 with a glass of wine included. I'd certainly like to wander back that way soon. Downstairs was a small freshly painted space with a telly and 25 chairs where Clare talked about her new book while her partner held up a ring binder with some photocopies to illustrate some of the works that she spoke about. It was just about full up with a mixture of animators, a few students and some of the artists featured in the book. She summarised the remarkable role that Channel 4 played in supporting the production of animation, until the big budgets dwindled to leave just Animate! and 4mations. There was also a television on which she showed Door by David Anderson and City Paradise by Gaelle Denis.



















I was lucky enough to have a copy of the book already as my producer Kathrein won a copy from Shooting People and kindly gave it to me. I'm a Clare Kitson fan, she wrote Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator's Journey. The author confesses that her new book has a hybrid quality, she tells her angle on the story of Channel 4 animation and sandwiched in the middle are the production stories from some of Channel 4's key works (30 of them). It's interesting for nosy people like me, coming to animation just before the end of the Channel 4 funding era to hear how it all came about and to know where everyone fits in. At the film festivals I have met many of the animators mentioned but not quite appreciated their place in the history of British Animation, I'm thinking about Marjut Rimminen, Vera Neubauer and Ruth Lingford in particular. It is the nature of the text that it leaves one wondering about the future of animation here in Britain, now that Channel 4 no longer supports it to a great degree. I think those Channel 4 years have led to a degree of expectation about funding for animation that has caused many animators to shelve their prospective works. I have lately tried to tailor my practice so that I can continue without waiting for significant funding (until another golden age comes by!).

My plans for 2009

I'm going to be mostly on maternity leave until early in the summer of 2009 although I will be doing a few workshops and teaching animation at Anglia Ruskin University for one day a week next semester. In July and August I'll be going to Vienna with the whole family to take up the residency that I was awarded as a prize at the Tricky Women Film Festival in 2008. I can't wait. it's not just the buns and some European travel but having some time to make work is a wonderful prize.

Mentoring

One of my favourite jobs last year was mentoring two out of the three animators who were making their animated films with a bursary from The Film and Video Workshop.
Elle Farnham made The Grand Pier an animation made using a spare rotoscope technique depicting the beach and Grand Pier at Weston Super Mare. Elle's film made it to the last 12 of the Depict competition and I'm sure it will visit many festivals next year.

Michaela Nettell is just finishing her film Under Skies, which is made up of very beautiful sequences of animated stills of Victoria Park re-filmed through glass and by mirrors, I'm looking forward to seeing the finished work.

Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Croatia

I was really pleased to be invited to show the drawings from Sawney Beane in the exhibition To The (Very) Last Drawing curated by Vanja Hraste. The show is on until 17th February 2009.


Here is a picture taken by Vanja herself.

It took me a long time to find the drawings to send to Croatia, not only is my Spellbound archiving system flawed but I'd forgotten that the drawings were really small (10cm x 8cm) compared to The Emperor and The Witches (approx 60cm X 40cm) so they were squirrelled into a smaller box. I can't remember why I chose to work so small, I was using charcoal instead of watercolour, so perhaps I didn't need so much space to make the images, I was also working in Montreal, so maybe I was being economical too. There are only 15 good drawings from the film, which is 10'38". This is because my technique just leaves one drawing per shot, instead of one per frame and after one particularly busy scene featuring King James I's army, there is just a scruffy mess left behind.

There's a baby on my desk.

I'm happily sharing my animation studio with Poppy. She arrived in October at the same time as a damp patch under the floor. Once the builders had gone it seemed like a good time to tidy up and instigate a temporary change of use, although as you can see, she's not left much room for me and my watercolours, move over Poppy!

Annecy


I had the chance to go to Annecy in June for a few nights, from Thursday to Sunday. It was quite overwhelming at first, the festival had been in full swing for a few days and I didn't know where to begin. Luckily I crossed over for a few hours with my NFB friend Michael Fukushima, we had a beer and chips until it rained when I found a taxi to my hotel. On friday I went to the Emil Cohl exhibition at the chateau up the hill. That was a rare and unexpected treat. I found out that Cohl was active in all parts of the theatre, had a photographic studio, wrote articles for newspapers about caricature, games and philately but that he was also interested in fishing, cycling, geneology and history as well as inventing games, tests, puzzles, anagrams and optical illusions before taking up film at the age of 50. The films were projected onto the walls in the Chateau but they were all projected at once, adjacent to each other. In my condition, I could have used a stool on wheels.

Annecy

Next week I'm going to Annecy on Thursday, so next weekend I hope to update the blog with my thoughts.

Anifest

Shelly Wain and I went to Anifest and here we are in the square where there was a screening of The Simpsons Movie.

































Shelly and I were both running workshops at Animate the World at the Barbican Centre in London on Saturday, so we arrived at the earliest opportunity on Sunday. One of the reasons that we targeted Anifest for our animation festival trip was Břetislav Pojar.
Thanks to the driver named Gerry we just arrived in time for the screening of Pojar's films and an audience with him too. It was fantastic to be in Trebon, sitting in the beautiful mint-green theatre watching the works of such a master. He came on at the end but he was just on his own, and obviously uncomfortable and dying to get away. Shelly wanted to know all about his multiplane set up and he threw some light on it, but only to say that there was a mirror involved... It was very mysterious and we are trying to find out more about that.



As you can see from my picture I'm expecting a baby at the end of the summer, so we didn't take things too fast. It went like this: full breakfast, screening, snack, screening, full lunch, screening, lie down, waffle/ice cream, little walk, supper, bed. We were only there a couple of days but we did catch a few screenings. The two films that I particularly enjoyed were KFJG no 5 by Alexey Alekseev, Hungary 2007, a really charming animation with a bear, a wolf and a rabbit in it and The Mouse Story by Benjamin B. Renner from La Poudriere, a really simple adaptation of an Aesop's fable with really great timing and characterisation. It was good to see Franz Kafka's Country Doctor by Koji Yamamura. The film has been winning alot of prizes, and I can see why, it's in a league of it's own. It's an eerie experience, very complicated and detailed, like a Paula Rego print. I'd like to have another look at it in a cinema to pick up some more of that story. He won the big prize, quite right too I think.

The British Animation Awards

I'm really pleased to be a finalist in the British Animation Awards short film category. A bit astounded too to be up there with Yours Truly by Osbert Parker and The Pearce Sisters by Luis Cook, two huge films. The award ceremony is on March 13th, it will be exciting to go to an animation party, or any party for that matter!

A hat trick or a nutmeg

The Old Man won best Independant film at BAF. Thank you very much BAF. I went for the first day of the festival and had an interesting day, I saw Paul Bush's talk and the professional and short films in competition.
Now I'm the guardian of this little fella. He has a stern look, which wont be bad for me because 2008 is going to be a year in which my studio is tidied more often.

Aurora in Norwich

In my spellbound blog I made a little report from Aurora but I dont think I said that The Old Man won best short film, it was a wonderful surprise, although I had a cheap train ticket, so I almost had to take the precious award and sprint for the train.

Dick Arnall

Following Robert Breer's morning screening was a wonderful tribute in memory of Dick Arnall, who sadly died in February this year. It centred around a screening of films, each one meaty and provocative in it's own way. The films were nominated and introduced by people who knew Dick, including his wife, the wonderful Finnish animator Marjut Rimminen. Other contributions came from Gillian Lacey, Robert Bradbrook, Gareth Evans, festival director Adam Pugh and Jane Pilling. They each had a story to tell and all together painted a picture of Dick that made those who knew him smile and feel a little bit sad and those that didn't know him wish they had.
The films themselves were almost all extraordinary and in the context of the screening, there was a conduicive air of concentration in the cinema. They included Jerzy Kucia's Przez Pole (Across the Field) from 1992, Patrick Bokanowski's La Plage from 1991 and Santiago Alvarez's film LBJ (1967)

Tommorrow I head off for a day trip to Bradford for the first day of BAF.

Robert Breer at Aurora

Here is a picture of David Curtis talking to Robert Breer on Saturday afternoon.

I only had one day at Aurora, but it was full to the brim with good things. Robert Breer had been there for the whole festival. He's very hard of hearing, but it just meant that no-one could interrupt one of his great stories and if a long winded question came his way, he just chose a word and ran with it. It was encouraging to listen to a person so contented with work and life who has made a film every year for 40 years. We saw a programme of his later films in the morning, this included LMNO, Bang, Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons and What goes up.
The films have no narrative continuity, but a definate shape and structure and I enjoyed trying to think of them more as paintings with a few basic elements that arrive from front to back and in layers, which you can piece together, not necessarily there and then but later as well. David Curtis asked him how he went about starting a film, to which he answered that he enjoyed feelings of a heightened sensibility, looking forward to something that's unpredictable and not knowing the outcome. The only thing that he knew was that he would avoid suggestions of narrative and continuity, not only to emphasise the plastic nature of the work but also because our daily experiences are fragmented in that way.

Pojd'te Pane

November is unofficially my month of animation, and thanks to a tip off from Shelly, Simon and their three small friends from Hackney, we had an outing to see some Pojar films at the Riverside together.
We watch Pojd'te Pane once a week here at home, we take it like a tonic, but seeing the bears in a cinema with a audience of Czech under fives was truly joyous and revealing. We could see the selotape and the fluff here and there and owing to the peals of laughter, I could tell there's a funny joke about the way that Mister and Mister speak to each other. There were also two other films, both with a message about pets: don't overfeed your dog, it will turn into an elephant and don't leave your cats on their own with your paints out. At the end there was a disco in the bar but by then we'd peaked for sure.