Goin' Posh

 Hastings Tall Sheds. Not, as family legend had it,
tall inside for mending fishnets (or fishing nets),
but a 3 storey shed, to exploit limited beach space.

Well last year a kind reviewer  (Eugenie Johnson) described one of my films as a breath of fresh air...but also as Crude line drawings... http://narcmagazine.com/review-sunderland-shorts-opening-night-sunderland-minster-2-7-15/ . Now I'm going to up my game crudewise - specifically to make the original drawings on a larger scale that wont get crudified so much by being enlarged on a big screen. Having resisted this for a long time because of the limits of the size of the monitor I'm working on, clearly its time to invest in some bigger better techno. Meanwhile an experimental pilot project (with a storyline around gender and specifically gender in cartoons) should help sort out what else needs to change with size - the scale of marks? the type of marks? - and how much longer will it take to complete?
Also, I realise it is some time since I attempted to animate an inanimate object...like a shed. This raises interesting ideas about the nature of the word animat/e/ion and why anyone would think a shed was not already animated by the dense layers of history and human intervention...and fish.

Having a plan...

wasps don't actually have teeth like this...OR DO THEY?

Finally, latest 4 minute animation (about gardening, magic realism and - er -  wasps) is completed and sound mixed, ..Actually, I spent today so far redoing the soundtrack, because it just didn't quite have the pace; but I still made my deadline of  the start of the new teaching year. Last week was induction but my bottom line was to be done by my first (PT) day of the teaching year - tomorrow. I don't usually have a strict deadline for films, except for a few ludicrously quick submission dates for themed shows... it's usually more like...just do it! and when it's done, do another one... But it is motivating to have a timescale, a plan, a deadline. It also means you can actually get ahead of it and give yourself time off, which is hard to do for an artist/ animator when that isn't your (every)day job.
And some of those things that annoyingly motivational business people say are useful... If work expands to fit the available time, it can also be made to contract to fit it...but only if you have a clear sense of how much time you're giving yourself. I'm always telling the students the importance of planning and managing their time... so you'll all be pleased to know that my house looks like Mr Trebus lives here (google it) and the garden looks like an amazonian rainforest...but the film is done...TaDa!