Start with the right story

think in images not in words...?

Another day, another film festival... and I have to say: I don't really get it...animations that aren't actually animated, but seem to be a series of images, some of which have movements in, some not; and which accompany a story being told by a narrator. I don't want to come across all purist (having made a career of doing things the wrong way) but it seems to me the point of animation is that it should do something that text and image don't - something more. That it should be not so much an image that moves, but a movement that is captured. I wonder if people make these films because getting fluid movement is really hard, especially if you are looking for naturalistic movement, or even harder.. gracefulness? Or whether maybe they are starting with a story which is too complex and subtle to work any other way. I like to find stories which will work without dialogue, where the narrative comes across in the actions and the emotions come across in the visuals, the pace, the expressive capabilities of a wobbly drawing.
There's a fine balance in trying to make animations for adults, which are visual stories but neither slapstick nor downright obscure. I don't know if I'm making that balance; but I do know I'd never make an animation tutor- I'd be telling the students "You're starting with the wrong story!"

Feed your Head - with Animation

I love film festivals. And Aesthetica/ASFF & Manchester/MAF give you 2 in one week which tends to make your head rather full. Also, strangely, it tends to give you a sense of existential crisis. (This film festival is full of film students. Only film students. We are making movies in order to train people to make movies. My life is pointless. sort of thing). Once again I was amused to hear some informed scoffing (Huh, its just a one-character shot. Too easy) and relieved to hear other people voicing my own confusion. There is always at least one film I get to the end of thinking "What? WTAF? I don't get it"... but sadly not in a good, "ooh this really challenges your assumptions and makes you think" kind of way but more in a "either I am really dense or this animator is just failing to communicate, and why the hell do ALL of these animations have funny little firefly things in" kind of way.  There was one which featured fireflies as protagonists, and one in which they were the metaphor that carried the plot...but about 8 more in which I just felt like animators were afraid of stillness so there had to be some kind of random movement in the background. Or, ooh, maybe fireflies are this year's big trend. And I've missed it. Again.

http://pepelemorse.tumblr.com/

There were some fabulous films, my favourite from MAF was probably Lucrece Andreae's Pepe le Morse /Grandpa Walrus (the story, the drawings, the believability of the characters) but there was also some really effective mixing of media/ style/ scene in Daisy Jacob's the Full Story - mixing drawn and painted images seamlessly with pixillation...(and that was something else besides bugs that was very big this year, live action pixillated)and Carlos Gomez Salamanca's Lupus, a kind of animated documentry/ reflection.
ASFF seemed to have more stuff that was visually dark and highly textured, but also with - well - JOY. The biggest hit with the audiences seemed to be Jack Bennett's Not the End of the World, because it captured so accurately the excruciating intensity of teenage first crushes and confusion. Once again the programmers appeared not to have anticipated that anyone might want to see all the animation programmes (rather than pick-and-mix through experimental, music videos and a bit of thriller, say) so trying to see them all meant travelling down on two separate days and a killer sunday schedule. Thank goodness for the nice warm teabar at City Screen.
And once again MAF co-incided with the latenight xmas market, so enabling shameless retail interludes in the gaps between my selected programmes. This enabled me to empty my head (aw look, baby penguin xmas baubles) before filling it again with ideas, questions, inspirations and enthusiasm for my next animation experiment. Hoorah!

Going to the dogs

Stop Press. (do they do that anymore?) Garden - complete with vampire wasps - is off to the Walthamstow International Film festival where it has been short-listed. Yay! Not sure what it's been shortlisted for, mind. Possibly a form of humane wasp control. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it's got a laundry basket on it's head (you kind of had to be there). Walthamstow, 3rd June
And even though Ive lived so long in the North East, Its quite exciting to be showing near to where I was born (Clapton) and first went to school (Wood Green). Wasps were even scarier than...

The Slow Lane

...now leads to Sunderland, where this tiny road movie has been selected for the short film festival. Which means I will actually get to go to a festival which has my film in it - so that's a new combination.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a short post (about nothing to do with animation, but involving thinking rocks and goats) has been accepted in this fine blog Febulous February.

And a second set of cackling witch woodcuts is underway, this one exploring the thorny problem of careers for young girls/ witches (virgin, mother, crone and ...er...the other one).


I had originally set out to create very short versions of Shakespeare films...but this is so much more fun. Apparently, what I'm doing here is adaptation.

Animation Pig-out!

still from Mr Madila. Rory Waudby-Tolley 2016

...at the ASFF festival. It runs over the weekend so I can actually go, although I still wish schedulers would consider the possibility that someone might want to watch (eg) ALL 6 of the animation sessions - rather than a random selection or a broad overview - and not schedule them back-to-back on opposite sides of York!! However, manged to do all 6, one family friendly (but the not the one I really wanted to see) and a couple of randomly selected experimental/ artists selections. ... 60 films over the weekend. Plus, caught a samba band, some art galleries and a couple of specialist shops, with time left over to walk the walls. Hoorah!
This year again a major theme seems to be autobiographical and "illustratory" - adaptations of existing stories which have a narrator reading the story. Some of these have no "events" , more an exploration of feelings or relationships, which makes the animation a challenge but also renders the images incomprehensible without the sound. Is this a good thing? The sound and vision should be integrated and complimentary...or a bad thing? I remember being taught back in artschool days that if a (static image) cartoon wasn't funny without the caption, then it wasn't funny...which I suppose should also work for sad/ mysterious/ challenging/ mindbogglingly thought-provoking...etc
For myself I like the challenge of working without dialogue or narrators, (as opposed to the hideous technical challenge of lipsynching).
So I saw some great imagery, some interesting stories, (and some horrors)... but my favourite in the festival was Mr Madila...or the Colour of Nothing. It had great pace, propelled along by a well-considered dialogue which ranged from the profound to the ridiculous with a natural rhythm. The drawings were energetic and expressive; the humour made it popular with the audience but it was more than jokey - after I stopped laughing I went away thinking about it...about why it was so affecting and about what the colour, and the importance, of nothing might be.
check out the trailer...
https://vimeo.com/131544900

rejection letters

heyho...more rejections from more film festivals.
I once met a woman (artist) who, having sent a proposal to a major art gallery, was really angry that it hadn't been accepted ..."but it was good!" she cried, passionately convinced there was some kind of conspiracy theory or at least rampant nepotism going on.
Alas...good isn't enough. Lots of people are good and film festivals like gallery exhibition spaces are hugely competitive. We-e-ell, that's what I'm telling me. But I think it's also time to admit that those particular two festivals are just not looking for the kind of work I do and its time to move on ("But I love her!" "forget it, girl, she's in a different world"). Not out of my league so much as playing a different sport.
So - be true to your own style, format, vision and just keep on. If just doing it - making the movies, drawing the vampire blackbirds, dreaming the storylines -isn't fun, isn't passionately, wretchedly, magically, hysterically good fun...then stop, because you'll never be better than hohum at it.
Meanwhile, back at the dayjob, the University has elected to give me some research remission so I can make even more animations. whoop!

...and also, possibly "argh!".

BlueSky

...has been accepted for the Amy Johnson festival,  http://amyjohnsonfestival.co.uk/ hoorah and whew and oh how pleased my Uni will be that I have something concrete (listable) to show for all the drawings Ive done. So, sometimes, it does pay off making a thing especially for a single festival/output. While colleagues discuss rewriting (dissertations. PhD papers, articles) for specific journals, it hadn't occurred to me that I could re-edit a film for a specific festival or screening...or that this would be a legitimate activity. Meanwhile I have to decide whether I can cope with time-travelling back to my old home in Hull to attend the festival! (of course I can. Too bad everyone I knew there has now moved to either Brighton or Hebden Bridge.)

Meanwhile, the strange tale of "The Slow Lane" continues, appropriately slowly.

Let Joy be Unconfined...

unlikely fish-person-hero: protagonists don't have to be heroes?
...

... Finally finished the latest animated short! An attempt to use only black and white  and to use texture without getting horribly visually confused. I made this for a particular film festival, with a theme, and have duly sent it off. & will be sending it further afield...But really of course I made it to see what would happen, to wrestle with the temptation to cut corners or suddenly use red and teal blue, and - as with most narrative work - to find out what would happen to the protagonist in the end.

Recycle, Remix, Return to Basics

First completed film of the year is Blue-Sky...a recut and savagely edited version of Islands (5 minutes plus down to 1'15)...not all of the narrative but the essence of the story with a different emphasis. This was a really interesting editing challenge and makes you think about the story/ the pace/ what is essential and what is spare....Letting go. Also, interesting to explore how not having time for lots of exposition at the beginning makes you ask yourself how do I establish the sense of community, friendliness, self-sufficiency? And oddly, this loss of context also affects the reading of gender...I found I needed to do some subtle redrawing of the characters here and there to clarify
Made for the Amy Johnson anniversary celebrations in Hull (my one-time home town)...Hope they decide to accept it. But either way, a big piece of learning....

Music for Animations

Baby...Success of the year for 2014 shown at Wimbledon 2014, Breeze Creatives event at Durham and at Whitley Bay Film Festival - installed in a pram. Baby was a silent film with a brilliant soundtrack composed and played by percussionist Nik Alevroyiannis. Looking forward to more possible collaborations with sound-people, this opens up a new depth to the animations, making a mood/ emotional space and giving it pace. These aren't commercial films, so I'm not in a position to "commission" music... but we are considering a reciprocal arrangement via animated music video...
Baby was an attempt to be less literal/ more abstract - free-er - with the figures... using the power of animation to enable powerful metaphors.
Photo from Whitley Bay: Miki Z

When Egg & Chips Collide

film number 6 of 2014 was Blue Moon Cafe. 1 minute short...which took three times as long as the last 1 minute short. But it is termtime at Teesside... and a book chapter to write...I love animation, but there's always other stuff to be done

I seem to be better at very short shorts - BMC was selected for, and subsequently winner of the Leamington Undeground Cinema festival 60 second Max challenge (2015) . Also selected for Wimbledon Short Film Festival 2015 . Plus you get more badges

Literal?

2014 gave me time for 8 new animations...and film 4 was "Growing" - a film about rewilding and inspired by the festival/ conference I attended - with Miki Z in Scotland "Carrying the Fire" .

I was hoping the Dark Mountain project- who run the festival - would be interested in the finished film, but apparently it was too literal. I've since changed the ending to make it more surreal... and shown it at the solar-powered sol cinema at the Festival of Thrift, Darlington. The characters here were quite realistic (in a way), but as the film was NOT in black/white it was interesting to think about race/ colour and how we do or don't use it in animation. Race is mostly irrelevant in the stories I'm animating, (this one for example is about life in built-up cities and our relationship with nature...which might have startling differences in different cultures, but globally, this is a very simple story)...but gender is often crucial... I also discovered I really prefer animating women, or characters who are quite over-the-top and abstracted.

Fresh Air

Another silent movie with strange noises...this one stars Maudie, unlikely hero of "The Meadows" Rest Home. making animations about older female characters makes you think of interesting questions like how do we distinguish male and female in animations, what are the signs that indicate female or old, how do we do this in a way that makes an individual character and not a stereotype?  I'm trying to use movement and expression and the behaviour of the character in relation to the story...referencing her memories and a sense of "nothing to lose"...
This film was selected for Sunderland Short Film festival 2015, where the critics were nice enough to say that the crude drawings (?!) were indeed a breath of fresh air. Not sure I was shooting for crude, but I'm happy with rough, or even wobbly. Animation should probably have movement!

Split-Screens & Flying Machines

Box was an experimental film in terms of the drawing style - loosely based on lino-cut and subtraction rather than addition as a drawing method. It also uses split screen/ changing screen size as part of the narrative... an idea I carried over from the PhD days and experiments with projected interactive works (Just don't! galleries won't touch them with a bargepole, and most of them don't even have a bargepole.)

Box was selected for both Wimbledon Short Film Festival, and Bradford Animation Festival. yay! and they give you a badge to prove it. One day I hope to combine visiting a film festival with showing at it and actually gauge some audience reaction to the work.