Out of the Shed and Down to the Seaside

 

Before and After

Am I being more shed? I am trying to be braver, and certainly to accept more challenges. I had made the film of the book, so why not the book of the film?..of an animation I made years ago, in Flash.
I can draw better now, (I thought) and I enjoyed the working process of making a series of finished images which would last longer than 1/25 of a second.
Actually, the best part of the film was the soundtrack, in particular the voiceovers by Paul (the voice of the shed) Baldwin, Julie McBean and Chris Moreland.

The picture book would not have the benefit of those so obviously, that was the challenge to go for. Having completed the drawings I immediately decided to redo them all in a more stylised way, which would have been impossible in an animation. Not that that would have stopped me trying.
Now that retirement from academia has removed the pressure to "publish"...it's playtime. And inevitably, it's also time to feel cut off from a creative community and flounder around eating too much cake, like Annie the main protagonist of The Sea. The story itself dates from the early 1990s, when I was seduced by the idea of a "wordprocessor" in the house. This led to a few short stories and the beginning of an epic but doomed fictional biography of my Great Aunt. Sometimes it is useful to explore a completely different medium -but mainly for the change of pace and the opportunity that affords for reflecting on how a story can be told... as much as asking WHY it should be told.
Annie took her feelings of cut-off-ness and sorrow and made magic out of them. Annie is definitely More Shed.

Be More Shed

nobody puts shed in a corner

Well I did. I wrote and drew not 365 but 366 sheds for The Daily Shed. Lockdown continued. Then I wrote and drew The A-Z of Sheds (so hands up if you knew what a xyst was?) The pandemic continued, so I did 2 picture books of 1-10 interestingly random alliterations inspired by Mervyn Peake. And then 10 more, but sheds. Everything still closed so I continued to search for inspiration by tramp the newly litter-encrusted footpaths of my "semi-rural" locale; Used Facebook to cheer up my chums and myself with comic illustrations, and photos, whilst creating depressingly nihilistic animations. Worrying about the state of the world, about money and bills, joining protests whilst mentally hiding under the bed waiting for the grown-ups to come home. Brooding on the nature of creativity and the meaning of it all. Obsessing about loo rolls, petrol shortages, and Normality...and finally launched into a picture story book about 3 sheds. And then adapted it to an animation. Massive amount of work. Fiddly drawings, 7 1/2 minutes. 

How the hell do you animate a shed helping another shed to make itself a pair of legs, when neither of them has arms to work with...or a face? Why did I write such a difficult story? Because the story was all about words, rhythms, creating images in people's minds...yes, let them worry how to get those legs on. It took so long I stopped and made a joyful 1 minute film (Be More Shed) half-way through, just for fun. This is a privilege.

So now - we still have brexit, corona virus, war in Ukraine and the cost of almost everything is doubling. I still don't have my pension. Enough. I decided to try to use animation to save the world. Maybe you cannot change the world by drawing it, but you can certainly try. Impossibility should never be a barrier to dreams. I will animate the Struggle, the Joy, the Outrage. I will do what I can. I will try to become my best me. I will try to Be More Shed

How short?

Lockdown has altered the nature of time. Milestones have been taken away, markers that differentiated monday from wednesday, schoolday from holiday; and even daytime from night. Some of us succumbed to the peer-pressure to "make better use of this time we have been given". I saw an opportunity to do something different, to grasp for positivity, to keep from going stircrazy and studied an online course in comic books. I don't really like comic books. But the idea of clarity-with-economy in communication, of identifying keyframes in a narrative; and the ease of using speech bubbles instead of having to worry about voiceovers, lipsynch and SFX was very appealing. Instead I have learnt a lot about mark-making with a limited palette (Black. White. That's it, no grey. No chiroscura, sfumato or other posh words for shading. No mimping.) and oh joy a rapid turnover to deadline. A story in 6 frames. 4 frames. a single frame. Published instantly and for anyone who wants it (because people need cheering up, because we want to stay in contact and posting amusing pictures of shed stops me ranting about the obscenities of the current world situation) Tune in every morning to see who likes it. who "Likes" it. who likes me.

Maybe I'll draw 365 and make a book.
Maybe this is a commercial venture.
maybe I need a BIG project as well as a quick one...

But is it art (my inner Foundation Studies Tutor enquires)?
But is it beautiful? But does that matter? I look at the work of other artists, including some I studied at Artschool with and think, Oh that's beautiful, that's art, why can't I do that. Catching myself out thinking that if it's funny or accessible it's not really "art".

Well, alright then, I'm going to make an animation that is funny, beautiful and a tiny bit profound. Just watch me.

Fortunately there are still several years of house arrest under lockdown to accomplish this.

shameful abandonment of blog

Once upon a time, working in France as an au pair, I was worried about not making art for a whole 6 months. Would I still be an artist? Would I forget how to do it? Would the ideas dry up without an outlet and then not flow again, like a dammed stream finding a new course...
Now, without the pressure to produce REF-able outputs and get them listed by a stupidly tight deadline, continuing to produce outputs - or as I like to consider it, to make art - is not slowing down...but the pressure to conform to a particular way of working, reflecting, surrounding the work in a specific language of interpretation and contextualisation is now relaxed. Going back to making art for the sake of it, the joy of it, still finding it the main reason for getting out of bed in the morning, not tied to a timetable or agenda; the only difference is I feel more free to experiment. BUT - I don't feel compelled to write up the experiments.

hills...gardening...shed...inspiration...linoprint

On the other hand, writing up is the reflective process that ensures we that learn something from those experiments and identify a useful place to explore and experiment next...rather than wandering self-indulgently in ever-decreasing blobby circles.
SO - why have I shamefully abandoned this blog? Because the garden needs me, to dig and weed and help it grow radish, spinach and courgettes. (developing muscles, the joy of tiredness caused by digging up and planting) Because the hills need me, to appreciate their beauty and peacefulness, (the joy of quietness, beauty, challenging gradients), because I did some commissions (stained glass, picture book, illustrations) and because actually making art is the most fun you can have, most of the time. So, I am trying to get a balance between physical exercise , thinking, creating and finding time for socialising, collaborating, learning.. Lord, Im even thinking of taking up running. So many ways to be happy...busy...so little time... So - apologies to my Reader for abandoning you, and to my academic hind-brain for leaving you to reflect by yourself. I will try harder.

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.