Animation test

So here's a style i've had in mind exploring for a while. I guess the idea originated back when me & Rozi did the Royal Wedding animation last year. I really liked the look of that piece, although wanted to take it away from rotoscoping. I think what I liked was the looseness & how fickle it appeared, especially for subject matter like the Royal wedding - the imagery sorta floated around like feint memories.

Virginia Woolf is also a big inspiration on this thought. In her writing she connects present moments with passed recollections.. all strung together through time as if on a dainty string.. things linger in and out of thought.

 ...from Orlando -
“Nature, [...], has further complicated her task and added to our confusion by providing not only a perfect ragbag of odds and ends within us—a piece of a policeman’s trousers lying cheek by jowl with Queen Alexandra’s wedding veil—but has contrived that the whole assortment shall be lightly stitched together by a single thread. Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind. Instead of being a single, downright, bluff piece of work of which no man need feel ashamed, our commonest deeds are set about with a fluttering and flickering of wings, a rising and falling of lights.”  - Virginia Woolf

I want to explore the whole stream of conciousness method with animation. Not by sitting down and animating and going 'straight ahead', but instead by taking my sketchbook out with me and picking up on scenes around town, then elaborating on them later at the lightbox.


Heres attempt one, this is from a drawing I did in Annecy -


It's perhaps a little too delicate in the line, I think what I may try doing is adding a watercolour background to it.

Anywho, i'll be doing a few more of these tests over the next couple of weeks so stay tuned.

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Oh also while on the subject, here's a painting I did of the woman herself for me pal Sion:

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And finally - Oh Cleggy weggy... you poor old sod of a dog.. Whatever have you done?
Wanted to repost this after watching the Lib Dem's get ripped to shreds on Wednesday's Newsnight.. I was photoshopping together a picture of Cameron then just happened to catch Cleggy's face in all the shots... speaks for itself really. Someone drown him quick.

Quincies poster

See you all (within reason) there!

Update & on artists

Here's a brief update on me life right now. It's been a while since I last posted but that's cus I don't have the internet where i'm livin. Since then, I got a job (harrassing people down the phone line) lost it (in rediculous circumstances) and am now back to where I want to be. This Charles Bukowski quote sums it up for me : 
"Baby, that's grammar school. Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; It takes a wise man to make it without working. Out here we call it hustlin'. I'd like to be a good hustler"
Anywho so like I say i'm back to where I want to be. Spend most days going down town, using the library, drawing people coming in and out of shops. My plan is to compile them all into a moving sketch animation. Had the idea for a while and soon i'll start.

Have just been on a brief tour of the country which was really good fun. Went up to Cardiff to watch the Speedway, then over to Brum for a few days to visit family & also got to see the villa, then up to York where met up with everyone's old pal Rosie, then we drove up to Glasgow to crash at me mates for a few days. After that headed back to Brum for a family party. Best thing is the whole trip cost me about £40... not a bad bit of hustlin' ey? Am looking to go to America in the next month & end up in Vancouver, where the animation career will (hopefully) spark to life!


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Like I say i've been reading a bit over the summer, currently got my noes in Cloughie (Brian Clough's autobiography). It's nice to read, good to hear the man talk about his life. He swings from these very humble statements to being mr.Big head.

Have been reading some art books too, and it's made me realise little niggles I find with art. I really like Jamie Hewlett's work, really like it. But I don't like this whole attitude..:


It's just all a ego trip. Howard Becker describes art critic's & texts as mystifying... mystification being 'explaining away the truth'. This is the whole tone & make up of this video... the black and white.. the wandering cameras... the reminscent ho ho ho's about drawing chewbakka. Artists aren't these mystical creatures. Another book Kathy recommended (Drawing from the Right) is a good one to bring you back down to earth. Artist's need to see themselves as yes, gifted, but gifted in the same way a good bricky is or manager at Tesco's. Don't believe the hype.

"Thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls' pants. Use it to get into their heads." - Dan le Sac

"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way." - Charles Bukowski