Workshop with Barry Purves

Barry was really one of the first people I met in the industry and it couldn’t have been a more encouraging experience. I’d read his brilliant book Stop Motion:Passion, Process and Performance and was so inspired by the book I was compelled to email him. Now I didn’t necessarily expect an answer, I was just expressing what I got out of the book and sending my thanks and congratulations but reply he did. We first met at Annecy a few years back and made a connection over our interest in the relationship between stop-motion and theatre; Barry started off in theatre and still directs and designs now. Since meeting he’s been a source of inspiration and advice. I’m still amazed at how much of his time he gives to students and young filmmakers. He’s completely generous and really thoughtful.

He came down to Newport to do a workshop which I attended for a day before having to go and work on my film. We made some really simple black silhouette paper puppets with which to practice, accurate detailed walk cycles. I think everyone got a lot out of it and it was good discipline. Barry is very strict!

The exercises were similar to those he’d done at the Italian National School of Cinema in Turin a couple of years back when I’d gone with him to help out with a course he was teaching. I’ve posted the photos as they’ve never really seen the light of day. Very nostalgic looking back, I met some really great students there who I’m still in touch with now.

Barry’s new book Stop-Motion as part of AVA's 'Basics Animation' series comes out soon.

Basics Animation: Stop-motion, Ava Publishing

Lip Sync

I created a simple face at a reasonable size so I could get some detail for a lip sync exercise. Plasticine covering a bit of hard foam I had lying around in the studio. The mouths are clay sausages. I mounted the head on a bit of wire for the shoot so it was kind of looming in the darkness (the dialogue I was animating to is quite intimidating). I wanted to get a bit of movement into the head so it wasn’t too static. I did a few exercises with a little car playing with movement speed, follow-though etc.

It worked ok but the brow fluctuated a bit. When I do the character performance I need to be more disciplined with the brow movements.

Studio AKA and Royal College of Art

As soon as I got back from Budapest it was time for something else. I’d met a load of the guys from Studio AKA at Annecy 09 and had been invited to go and see the studio and hear about what they do which was a real pleasure having admired their work for so long. I’d organised a visit through the wonderful Ren Pesci and was lucky enough to be able to take a bunch of peers from the film school, notably the Annecy gang who are now all busy working on their graduation films.

We talked through the Studio’s history, their set-up and processes and saw a really interesting making of The Big Win commercial by the brilliant Marc Craste. We also got some inside info from the guy who made the sea in Philip Hunt’s epic and touching Lost and Found. We’d all seen the short in Annecy and sat through a lot of really bad work in the screening of children’s content before Lost and Found which is just beautiful, unpatronising, cinematic and heart-warming. Based on the book by a favourite children’s illustrator of mine Oliver Jeffers. The blog, featuring lots of lovely concept art and designs can be found here.
 
After AKA we went to have a look at Royal College of Art as Pete’s looking into places to do a masters. It seemed pretty buzzing, relaxed, ambitious, flexible. I’ve been thinking about post-grads recently, but I don’t want to do one yet and I don’t want to stay in the UK…

Animation Sans Frontieres Part Two: MOME. Budapest, Hungary

I travelled down to Hungary with Marie-Louise Højer Jensen who was just finishing a stint at Aardman working on Shaun the Sheep. She showed me some books by German illustrator Anke Feuchtenberger whose website can be found here.  There were a lot of qualities in here work that I liked; the use of colour, the expression of line and the play of light, light as definition, as sculpture.

Anke Feuchtenberger

We arrived in Budapest in the evening, supposedly to be met at  the airport by a chauffeur holding a sign on which our names would be printed. As it happened he was nowhere to be seen and it was only sometime later that we saw him from behind somewhat spoiling the illusion. We drove from the airport through the illuminated city to the North West where are hotel was situated. And what a hotel; complete with epic breakfast, pool, sauna, hot tub, and views of the mountains. Our rooms were more like apartments with kitchens, lounge etc. So there was no question of space like there was in Ludwigsburg although ironically we spent far little time in the hotel as there was far more going on in Budapest.

After a tour around Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design we  had the first of a series of lectures about animation in Eastern Europe. These were particularly interesting for me because I’ve always had a love for the films from this part of the world and the rich culture they evolved from and were a part of. In Hungary we looked at some early experiments mixing animation and live action and the all important George Pal who later moved to Hollywood with his Puppetoons – a technique he developed involving replacements. The lecturer Ferenc Fischer kindly copied me some of Pal’s shorts and commercials which is useful as they, like much work from this area are incredibly difficult to come by.

Michael Carrington from the Zlin animation school just outside Prague gave us a talk about the history of Czech animation which was particularly interesting because he really focused on some favourite filmmakers of mine. Out of all the films to come out of Easter Europe in the communist era some of my personal favourites are from former Czechoslovakia. Carrington talked about Hermína Týrlová, Karel Zamen and Yiří Trnka, bypassing the more obvious Švankmajer and Barta. He showed some really old works and talked about how the style developed, the specifics of the puppet animation, the hand-crafted quality and the desire to solve problems in camera. What was also brilliant was that he came right up to present day practice and talked about a director I really admire; Aurel Klimt and the fabulous Fimfarum series of films. There are two Fimfarum films and the third, we were told by Carrington, is in the process of being made. Based on the stories by Jan Lenika, they are feature film format but are made up of about 3 or 4 shorts. Brilliant for research and fascinating to get some in depth information about the development of a scene and a place I’m so passionate about.

FIMFARUM2. Image: Maurfilm

Sessions on the Eastern European market helped us to understand how and where things are being made and with what money. Chello Media of Central Europe talked about acquisition and programming and producer András Erkel took us through the production of animation in Hungary and beyond and how this has been affected politically over the years.

 
One of the brilliant things about the MOME module was that we were introduced to a bunch of new softwares just out of development. Tools to change the way you present information, pitch and think through ideas, to programs like SourceBinder, a tool for ‘prototyping and real-time tuning of flash based visual applications’. It doesn’t mean I’m going to suddenly start making films in a new way but to be exposed to these methods, ways of working and perhaps more importantly, ways of thinking is really valuable for my practice.

Arguably the most valuable of all these software-related discoveries was from Flavio Perez, another ASF participant. Flavio invited me to use GoogleWave, a new application from everyone’s favourite inventors the Google team. GoogleWave, still in a slightly fragile Beta stage is like a cross between Sykpe, email, and a flow chart. It can be used to map out projects, collaborate in real time, post and share anything from videos to sounds, draw attention to certain items, re-edit posts and texts and boasts a playback mode where you can watch the project grow and develop and see exactly where and when items and posts have been added. I promise I’m not secretly working for Google, I’m just excited about it. I’ve started appropriating it straight away with Chris Gylee and Adam Peck as a platform to further develop The Cutting Room from wherever we might be.

There was an emphasis in Budapest on style and technique. Many of the student films they screened from the film were really unique in their approach and aesthetic. Rastko Ciric, a professor from Serbia shared some slightly dubious work from his school and discussed individual style and the voice of a director in animated filmmaking. Tamás Waliczky, veritable pioneer of CG animation gave a riveting lecture about the development of the form, its possibilities and the balance between art and technology.

A special screening of Panique au Village held for us in an art cinema thanks to

Falvai Györgyi from MOME who also works for the company who distributed this movie.

We had a couple of ideas development sessions with script editor and dramaturge Rita Domonyi who took us through a bunch of writing exercises, drawing on inspiration from photographs and text for adaptation. There were several pitches involved in this workshop which was really useful, I’m finding I’m getting a lot more confident with presenting in this format and also being able to discuss protect and stand up for the projects pitched. Should come in handy soon…

Pitching time. Photo: Laetitia Grandjean

Case studies by filmmakers gave us an insight into the minds of creators from places such as Poland, Switzerland and Russia. Tomasz Bagiński of Platige Image, Poland talked through his successes as a filmmaker and talked about the process he adopts when making films from getting the design right to finalizing an edit.

The first of the two highlights of the MOME module has to be Jonas Raeber of SWAMP in Switzerland. Jonas’s talk was entitled: ‘Relations and Dependencies: Conceptual Aspects of Animation’ and covered everything from what makes a successful film and the consideration of audiences to ‘budgeting made easy’ and a breakdown of production. The second highlight was Russian born Alexei Alexeev, creator of the well-known Log Jam. He came to discuss his experiences creating the first short KJFG No5 and the development of an idea from start to finish. Alexeev now works for Studio Baestarts in Budapest, strangely directed the Mr Bean cartoon and is as funny and as entertaining as his films. Studio Visits
Cinemon work mostly in traditional hand drawn animation as well as digital cut out for some of their work for children. They produce various content from series to feature films. The driving force behind the studio is producer Réka Temple whose working philosophy was sound and inspiring. The studio was based in an old house with a wooden conservatory used as a meeting room and was situated within a large, sprawling garden. Temple spoke to us about her experiences of working with directors, getting projects off the ground and co-productions in Europe.

The second studio was Lichthof Productions, based in a very cool ‘up-and-coming’ part of the city surrounded by fashionable eateries and bars where instead of a roaring fire, central heating and a carefully placed plasma TV displaying a roaring fire are slightly more chic. Lichthof is the home of Hungary’s no1 animator Áron Gauder who directed the gritty urban animated  feature The District for those who caught that on the festival circuit a couple of years back. He’s now hard at work on his new feature Egil: The Last Pagan, a vicious tale of Viking warfare. Gauder usually works in digital cut out and CG but the part I found interesting about this project came from a connection with the Polish company Se-ma-for.

The biggest studio in Poland, Se-ma-for were responsible for, under Suzie Templeton’s inspired vision, creating the 2006 hit Peter and the Wolf. After a lack of work for the stop motion animators Gauder invited them to Budapest to animate armatures which had tiny motion capture rigs attached to them, feeding directly into a computer. The movements that the animators gave the puppets then created a skeleton movement which a CG character could then be laid over. This technique apparently saves time on a lengthy rigging process and also gives the CG a certain stop-mo quality, to which I have to quote Mette Ilene Holmriis from the animation workshop, who called it so elegantly “staccato”.






You can read more about the technique and watch a video of the process on their website here.


We joined the illuminati of the Hungarian animation industry (mostly made up of our lecturers) at the opening ceremony of Anilogue, an annual animated film festival for a screening of Adam Elliot’s masterful Mary and Max. There was much excitement for those who hadn’t seen it. It was my second viewing and it astounded me once again. It's not just a brilliant animation but it's a genuinely brilliant film. The use of stop motion makes the whole thing seem completely living and grounded; the light the textures, the economy of the movement. Elliot has a real talent for making us engage and empathize with lumps of plasticine. Simply genius cinematic storytelling.

Mary and Max (2009) Dir. Adam Elliot. © Melodrama Pictures

The last puppet making session

Ian Matthews showed us a sting for E4 that his mate from Calon had made. It’s a very nice ident – incredibly stylish, trendy and has a charm only stop motion could evoke. He brought in one of the puppets on loan from the owner for us to have a look at. The design was relatively simple compared to what we have been making. They were a great example of purpose-built puppets; the models were built to execute a specific performance, the characters only needed to be seen from the waist up - so that's the only section they made, they only wave their arms and bounce a bit, so make them economically so they perform well without the extra effort of building a whole, complete, articulate puppet.

Click on the image to watch the sting on the E4 site

My armature is nearing completion. I managed to catch up quite quickly having been away after spending a day in the workshop. A little more soldering and gluing to go and then I should have a working armature. Ian very kindly gave us a comprehensive guide to building a stop motion puppet – a summing up of his teachings over the last month or so. I think he’s really inspired the group to become more serious about stop motion and get out there and try making some more models. I’m now anticipating the animation section of the training which starts this week.

Whilst on the subject of stop motion and its qualities I also wanted to share the work of Alison Schulnik. A graduate of CalArts, her work really plays on the materiality and performativity of clay in all its richness and tangibility. She has a very identifiable painterly style throughout her plastic arts and motion picture work. Check out her website here.

Jiří Trnka and Jiří Barta

When I returned from Germany a book had arrived for me in the post. Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, translated by Paul Hamlyn, but more importantly illustrated by Jiří Trnka. The book first came out in the late fifties and the version I managed to get hold of from the net was published 68. The book contains some really brilliant illustrations, from what I can tell they’re mostly made from coloured pencils and watercolour, which Trnka used a lot of designing his characters. There’s so little material on Trnka available I was lucky to snatch this whilst I found it; it’s great to have some hard copies of some of the wonderful work he made. Now all I need is for a comprehensive collection of his films on DVD to be released…

  
Click on images to enlarge them

I have just discovered that Jiri Barta, master Czech animator who created brilliant stop motion pieces such as Krysař (The Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1985) completed a stop motion puppet feature film in March of this year. The film is entitled Na půdě aneb Kdo má dneska narozeniny? Or In the Attic or Who Has a Birthday Today? in English.
His last film was a rhythmic CG piece which I wasn’t too sure what to make of but from the look of this trailer his latest film looks quite brilliant. There are a few different techniques in there and some really nice puppet animation. I hadn’t heard anything about this at any of the festivals this year but perhaps it will get around a bit next year. I hope so; I would love to see it.

Trnka illustrations from ‘Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales’ published by the Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd

German Doorways

Studio visits and the end of part one

The last day of ASF part 1 we spent visiting two big German studios. The first was the relatively young but extremely talented  award winning Studio Soi. This company was founded in 2002 by graduates from the Filmakademie and they work across a range of disciplines although most of their output consists of 3d CG films. These are beautifully crafted, earnest, poetic films with real heart. They hark back to a more nuanced way of filmmaking where the shots are longer, the editing more precise and the imagery symbolic, whilst at the same time feeling very fresh and contemporary.
The studio was a large, mostly open plan space with drawing boards, computers and displays scattered everywhere. Amazing imagery covered the walls, the studios design is fantastic and for the most part is done by one guy – Jakob Schuh. Their latest project, an adaptation of classic children’s book The Gruffalo, is  commissioned by the BBC, stars a host of British stars as the voice talent and look absolutely beautiful. They used a mixture of stop motion sets with CG characters which look very tactile and clay-like. From the preview we got to see (straight from the cutting room floor so to speak) this blend of the two forms is seamless and the storytelling came across as economic yet epic.

Studio Soi’s Carsten Bunte, Jakob Schuh and Torben Meier

The second studio we visited was Film Bilder in Sttutgart. This company has been around for a while and has a reputation for producing a wide range of work from the animated sequences in Tom Twkyers brilliant Run Lola Run to Andreas Hykade’s sexually charged Ring of Fire. The studio is situated on the top floor of a very tall building in the centre of Stuttgart with stunning views of the city. We were guided around by Thomas Meyer-Hermann, the studio head, who gave an insight into the philosophy of the studio and how it has lasted so long, making both experimental short films and more commercial work. The presentation of work he gave was varied and vibrant. He introduced us to ‘Tom’ which is a quite hilarious children’s series they do.

Despite a night of joyous celebration, a large meal with the staff and some dancing, we all left the Filmakademie with heavy hearts, not wanting to leave this company of people. But we won’t be apart for long, we all fly out to Budapest on Sunday for the next part of Animation Sans Frontieres – The Animation Production Workshop.

Torvald und der Tannenbaum © Studio Soi 2005
TOM © Film Bilder 2003

Newspaper Article

An article from Bristol Evening Post.

Unfortunately not entirely accurate but publicity nonetheless.

Pre-production, post-its and pitching

One of the highlights of the past few days was an improvisation workshop with Dörthe Eickelberg. We looked at theatrical improvisation, creating characters, walks, physicalities and how these can be used for storytellers. I spent a lot of my theatrical trainging doing this kind of work so it was great to go back to it and relate it to filmmaking and creating characters and stories for animation. It's a very free, creative way of working and also really helped the group to bond. I think these techniques are also useful for bringing together a team, a group of people working on a film, discovering a common language and perhaps, more importantly establishing a sense of humour.

We had a really interesting session with Kim Bjørnqvist who's background lies in the cut-throat world of advertising and he had lots of entertaining stories to tell us. We had him for two days and the time was really spent looking at models for effectively developing and realising ideas aswell as pitching and presentation. We looked at structures from Disney and other companies and various methods of thinking, target audiences and research before consuming plenty of post it notes for huge ideas generation sessions.

Another interesting presentation was about stereoscopic 3d, existing and emergent technologies, what this means for cinema and how it can be harnessed and used effectively within animation. This session was taken by François Garnier, a leader in this field who joined us after a shoot with Wim Wenders in another part of Germany. He talked a lot about the science and technicalities of how stereoscopy works and it's interesting history. It turns out that the basic 3d image has been around since photography began and that filmmakers such as Méliès, Eisenstein and Hitchcock all made stereoscopic films.

He gave us insight into how 3d work is being used in theme parks and the kind of complicated experiences that are being created, the results are stunning and we watched several stereoscopic films as part of the presentation, some made by his students, some visualization from theme park rides as well as 3d animated films.

He had a lot of interesting ideas on the future of the technology saying "3d is sometimes not the best way to tell a story but rather to experience the story". He did not seem to think that 3d is the way forward for all cinema. He said that the craze we are currently experiencing is transitory and that the technique will find its place more in augmented reality, instalation and other forms as well as cinema. The day really got me thinking about the various uses for this technology and he actually gave us a relatively simple demonstration of how to make a stereoscopic film using the old red and blue glasses method as opposed to the new polarized 3d which he also took us through. Note to self: DIY stereoscopic stop motion student film?

The last workshop was with Alex Mayhew who interestingly was a researcher at the International Film School Wales and made some work there. He was talking to us about media strategies and ways of thinking about content travelling across various platforms and how these inform each other. We had a workshop in the afternoon where we generated ideas on these grounds and then pitched them as projects. All this pitching practice is great and I really feel like I'm getting a lot from what I'm learning.

Image: Aardman Animations

In other news Wallace and Gromit are celebrating their twentieth aniversary, and as part of the celebrations The Culture Show in UK will be broadcasting a special episode live from Aardman's studios in Bristol. Further information here.