A year ago I was awarded the Arts Council England DYCP funding. This blog post is about all that I got up to, the wonderful surprises, the parts that maybe didn’t work as I’d expected, and how this explorative year has enriched my creative practice forever.
During the pandemic pretty much all of my work became digital and my screen time increased considerably, which decreased my mental and physical wellbeing. This DYCP funding allowed me time to explore a more tangible, hands on, face to face practice, and take an ambitious step in my career towards working in new and more sensory ways.
Stage 1: Stop Motion Animation
I can’t begin to tell you how the Aardman Academy Stop Motion 2 Industry Training course stretched me as an animator. I relished 3 months of Master classes and Q&As with the most inspirational creatives from the stop-motion world, weekly tasks that took me to my edge and helpful support, critique and encouragement from both my mentor, Maraike Kraemer (who has worked on films like Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, as well as series like shaun the Sheep), Stuart Messenger (our incredible course leader), Mark Simon Hewis, head of Aardman Academy and a new giant network of animator peers who have remained a huge wealth of knowledge and support since graduating in July.
Here’s a little taster of where we went with our weekly tasks.
I realise now that using LAVs (Live action video) to inform an animation is the absolute best way for me to add truthfulness and character to a puppets performance, and that this is something I can add into my workshops with children. Until now I would have children creating the characters, storyline, back story, voiceovers, music, sound fx, background and foreground but the physicality of the characters wasn’t something I left to the children. Why not? It is so integral to the story telling.
I learnt, through working with LAVs that we humans do funny things, like when we shift our gaze we blink. I learnt that it looks better to drop some mouth shapes rather than trying to be completely accurate with a lip-sync. I learnt that creating replaceable mouth shapes is WAY speedier than using the sculpt through method.
I also learnt that stop motion would tie me to a screen just as heavily as digital animating. It is a much lengthier process, and what’s more, you have to have controlled lighting and therefore you need to be in a space with no natural light. The saving grace is that you are doing something physical and tangible, sometimes for long stretches of time, between each frame.
Since illustrating Deep in the Whispering Woods: An Imagination Journal for Storytellers by Holly Staniford, I had been hoping to run workshops with children using nature to inspire storytelling, where children could take their dreamt up characters out into the real world and animate them there and then. I was starting to feel like stop motion, in order to be accepted as a piece of art would have too many restrictive elements if I wish to maintain my ethos of fully trusting a child’s creative impulse.
You can imagine how delighted I was when I was introduced, through one of our Q&A sessions to this incredible film by Ainslie Henderson.
The most inspiring, fire in the belly moment of the whole three month course was discovering Ainslie’s work. Here was an artist who wasn’t afraid to break rules in the pursuit of creativity. ‘Shackle’ is a beautiful stop motion film shot outside, regardless of the changes in light. In fact it is made more beautiful because of the changes in light!
His film, Stems is all about his creative process. The VoiceOver is Ainslie speaking his real, spontaneous thoughts accompanied by the most wonderfully appropriate, playful soundtrack which comes to life through the stop motion puppets, playing instruments. Even Ainslie’s voice becomes part of the action as a filter is added and it’s clear it is being played via a dictaphone by one of the little dreamt up characters.
He speaks about creating characters using found objects. From nature or discarded bits and bobs. This is EXACTLY what I wish to be doing with my workshops with kids and here I had a clear example of how wonderful this process can be.
Here is a little peek at part of my final project:
Stage 2: Automata
I have loved diving into the world of automata. There is something satisfying about turning a handle and feeling the resistance of an actual mechanism, knowing that your action has created movement and breathed life into a character or scene. My dream is to use automata within a performance or stop motion film that can then be explore and manipulated by kids in the real world having already seen it in action as part of a story.
I began to mix my stop motion characters with simple automata bodies, dreaming up ways that would be simple to implement in workshop environments. The body was drawn on a 300gsm card stock using kid safe felt-tips. The wire used both to attach the feet to, and as the handle, is made of an easily pliable aluminum wire. Kids could easily help to bend the aluminum into the correct shape if given a paper guide to work from. The base is a simple cardboard structure, which I would probably bring pre-assembled to workshops because it’s boring and fiddly!
Then I took thinks a step further and used stop motion to animate a lip-sync together with the automata action.
I am completely inspired by Stoccafisso Design and wish to implement some of his techniques into performance settings in the future.
Stage 3: Projection Mapping
I am so excited to be adding projection mapping to my skillset. I wish to be able to bring everyday environments to life by wrapping objects in projected animation, created by children. This creates the most wonderfully playful opportunities in performances and immersive exhibitions.
Spending time with Rebecca Smith at the Urban Projections HQ has helped me realise there are even more ways to weave projection mapping into my process than I had first imagined. We started by focusing on a software called Resolume Arena which will be perfect for all that I am dreaming up. Children will be able to trigger animations around an exhibition space using buttons or sensors. Equally Resolume will work as the backbone of performances, triggering both the sound and visuals. But Rebecca also encouraged me to give Tagtool a go, and I’m so pleased I did.
Tagtool runs on iPads and is a software that allows you to animate live. I love the idea of kids be able to imagine something and then to immediately animate it. Tagtool could be the answer, although the animations are relatively crude and limited they give it’s creator an immediate gratification that would be wonderful as part of a larger immersive experience.
I started to think about using Tagtool to bring our environment to life. Giving kids little handheld projectors, inspired by The Colour Foundry, and my desire to use nature to inspire creativity, I thought I was best to switch the mixed reality testing period to working outside in everyday surroundings, streets or gardens. I tested the process on my 78 year old mother to see if she could handle the software.
Projection mapping onto nature then led me on to thinking about augmented reality and how I can bring children stories into any environment using Adobe Aero. I thought about how this might mean I could cross oceans with stories from children in lands afar, sharing characters, cultures, stories and music in a wonderfully immersive, cocreated way.
I started by using a business card as a base for this idea. Thanks to Jacob from Spectrum WASP for this wonderful VoiceOver and artwork.
I then went on to think about how we can reimagine our towns and cities through the eyes of our children. Using Adobe Aero again, I used Mansfield as my testing ground and the help of Chloe from Spectrum WASP for the awesome artwork.
I also started playing with how projection could work within a piece of stop motion. Here I created an aquarium for my stop motion puppet using my coffee table.
What’s Next?
I am so excited to pull all of these new skills into my practice.
In January I will be in Costa Rica running my first stop motion workshop where children will build their puppets using clay, plus fallen leaves, twigs, petals and rubbish found on the beaches of Nosara. The children will dream up their characters inspired by their hunt and their environment. I will share these stories in further stop motion workshops back in the UK, using the power of augmented reality.
I will be applying for further funding to work with children to co-create an immersive experience that encompasses stop motion, automata and projection mapping, hopefully teaming up with Spectrum WASP again who have been a joy to work with over the last year.
I will also be teaming up with Rebecca Smith in 2025 to create a mini film using her awesome projector bike and projected animations created by children during my workshops.
sojo animation 