Christmas

Every year now, I make a "stained glass" christmas card and an online, animated card. Christmas for me is about family and friends and renewing connections of love and kindness. So - regardless of anyone's religion, philosophy, or world model, Happy Xmas and a new year full of beauty and - er - animation. Here is an example... Actually I like to play with real stained glass too...

Feature-length Shorts

No, it just feels like it. At over 5 minutes, "Islands" was massively time-consuming for a solo project, not least because the visuals were full-colour and intricate...lots of experiments with patterns and patchwork quilts. This, and ASGC took up most of the year. It was a more expanded narrative and seemed to be more concerned with "beauty" that most of the films. Working on the glorious technicolour of ASGC seems to have had a lasting effect...so far. This is another project which made me look carefully at how gender is represented; its obvious to me these characters are all women/ when seen in relation to the men (hint: the men have wings) but is that what an audience conditioned to default to "man" when it sees a semi-abstract figure would see??

Animated Music Video

Apple Size Golden Clitoris - from the track/ album of the same name...A major challenge...working with an old friend and singer-songwriter Jan Allain on an animated music video. A long track, (over 5 minutes) and difficult to synchronise to the beat - not least because this is working backwards for me  - but made very much easier because I kept imagining Jan's explosive laugh in my ear in the good bits.
A very interesting project , which also involved the challenges of an absence of linear narrative, animating a clitoris, and representing someone else - professionally - through an animated portrait. What do you think of the end result? (Youtube) Beware; apparently its a persistent earworm.

Estings - or not

Channel 4 put out a call for 10 second ident animations for E4 Estings...so wish I'd done this BEFORE Jan's video as it really helped me work out the easiest way to synchronise when starting from the music. They didn't want it, but unfortunately it's no use for anything else. There's probably a moral there in picking your themes carefully and always having an eye on recycling!

Animated Portrait

This summer our Dean (Gerda Roper) retired, and the media crew decided to make her a video send-off. I thought it would be more appropriate to make my input as an animation So, I made a tiny tribute to her and her big influence on the shape of the School (SAM, Arts and Media). Making a portrait of someone as an animation is a new challenge - not really a caricature, but having recogniseable signs including in this case, expressions and big jewellery. So far, she doesn't seem to hate it!

Knit-your-own-Shed

Ongoing - this year I am working with Miki Z on an art/craft project knitting an installation. Now it also includes crochet (thanks for the instructions Mum) with broomhandles, and proggy. This may take the rest of our natural lives to complete... I sometimes miss the physical, gestural aspects of big painting and sculpture. So it's good to have artist friends who will suggest mad collaborations from time to time...