Animation

The good thing about the futile search for meaning and a sense of self through leisure activities is that you get to try a lot of different things. None of them bring you what you want, of course, but it keeps life varied. Last year I started going to a short film night where I saw several charming and wondrous stop-motion animations. That familiar combination of awe, aspiration and an overwhelming disappointment and frustration with myself came over me. I have a voice in my head like one of those competitive parents in American films who say 'why couldn't you be more like that kid?' That's when I know I've found my next 'answer'. If only I could be like that, do that, make that.... I'd surely be all the things I want to be. There is a promise on the horizon and I set off at a sprint towards it but the closer I get, the more I can see the detail and the picture starts to look the same as the rest, the same as the present. Then I wait for the next promise on the horizon to appear.

My sprint towards becoming a charming and wondrous stop-motion animator began with a six week night course. We were advised to create something simple, perhaps moving bits of coloured paper around to music. So, inevitably, I created my own set and staged a scene from a live Bill Hicks show using cowboys from Poundland, real mud from the garden and hand-crafted tumbleweed. Apart from the college room having to be fumigated after my 'real mud' went really mouldy between sessions, the whole thing was a great success. I like to think of it as 'knowingly naive', which basically means it looks shit but I like it.
http://youtu.be/i27H7RyGMLE

Following this early triumph, I decided to enter a city-wide competition to create an animation to be set to a silent film score. The winner and the runners up would have their film shown at the Symphony Hall to an audience of 2500 people with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra playing the score live. Deluded? Quite possibly but that is the nature of the sprint.

The rules dictated that the film had to be set to a given clip of music, it had to be about Birmingham and feature an iconic image of Birmingham. I chose a music clip that sounded like a chase scene and ended up creating a paper-model world of Birmingham where the Birmingham bull comes alive and wreaks havoc, gathering a throng of angry townspeople in his wake.

http://youtu.be/hwmNPTLLaRE

Following it's initial conception, the making of this short film was quite an up-hill struggle. There was a death in the family, the animation software I had acquired wouldn't work and I had just over a week till the deadline. However, me and my friend, Steve, had already spent several hours cutting out hundreds of tiny paper people so there was no going back. Chaos prevailed as I got closer to the finnish line. Two days before submission I had to travel home to Yorkshire to attend a funeral and a birthday party. All the footage had to be uploaded and roughly edited together so I could take it up there with me on a USB stick (where it would go on my brother's laptop for final editing).

The day before the train to Yorkshire I spent hours taking pictures of tiny people chasing a tiny bull round a tiny Birmingham. The drama culminated at the Custard Factory, where custard-calamity ensued. I had to get the consistency of the custard right so that I could pour it on to the set slowly enough to take individual pictures of it moving. To achieve this consistency I had filled every pot, pan, bowl, jug and empty vessel in my kitchen with custard and poured it on all the available flat surfaces. I finally got it right and shot the last scene. There was no time to clear up. I had to get on my motorbike with the footage and ride up to my boyfriend, Fitz's house where some totally legitimate, newly acquired software awaited me. I got it all into one movie file before bedtime. At the crack of dawn I had to get up to ride back to my flat, get my stuff (including outfits and cards suitable for both birthdays and funerals) and get to my train. My bike wouldn't start because it was frozen over so Fitz had to give me a lift and by the time I got home, it was time to leave.

I returned home four days later to find some very disturbing scenes in my flat. Tiny paper people lay strewn in set lakes of custard, their facial expressions still visible through a gelatinous yellow film. Paper limbs poked up though a rubbery yellow floor a mini-me lay face down, drowned in custard-lava. It was an odd experience clearing up the wreckage and disposing of the paper people and I felt a sadness while I did it (but then I still feel sorry for teddy-bears who are left by themselves).

It was all worth it because I discovered the unending joy of custard powder and cold water. It's amazing. I don't want to spoil it for you. If you have custard powder in the cupboard then you're all set for a fun night in. Oh yeah, and I got a runner up place so my film was screened at Symphony Hall!

Has animation changed my life?
I'm now working on my third animation so it does seem to have stuck longer than other things. It also takes a lot of patience (not a quality I have in abundance ) so I think it's good for me in that sense. I don't feel like it has changed my life, but it may have made a successful transition into being a past-time. I'd be amazed if I carried on with it (just because of my track record) but I hope I do because I think I actually enjoy it.
Rating: 6/10
Comments: Animation hasn't made me into the person I saw on the horizon so it can't score too highly on the scale. It has been full of adventure, though, in it's own way and I have discovered little parts of me that I didn't know were there.
Development ideas: Make short animations with a social comment to make people think about the world they live in and the people that live in it with them.