If you're digging the past, who knows what you'll find

Remember Hum, our new film? We feel like we've neglected it slightly, but only because we've been busy at other studios over these last few months. Anyway, guess what, I have some Hum news!

Hum is part of Digging Deep, which is a big creative project thingy that encompasses social media things, zines, illustration, pyjama parties, and will culminate in a play at Contact Theatre next Spring. It's all interactive, and if you want to take part, and thus become part of the play and the whole creative process (all engineered by playwright/poet Nikky Norton Shafau), then you should click here: http://www.digandreap.com/

There's various fun, random challenges which relate to the themes around Digging Deep, and which will feed into the play, which is still being developed. You'll also earn rewards for taking part...oooh enigmatic creativity...

More Hum news soon, I promise...

You know how to get along humming

We have finished our third film! It's called Hum, and it's an abstract animation about sleep paralysis.

We developed the idea for the story after meeting with Nikky Norton, a playwright and poet based in Manchester. She's working on a big project with Contact Theatre, mixing sound, animation, illustration, theatre, poetry, and performance art, which Hum will have a part in.

That's not until next year though. In the meantime we have plans... We're pleased to announce that Hum will premiere at Exposures Film Festival at Cornerhouse in Manchester next month. The film will show on Tuesday 21^st at 5pm, along with a live action drama also commissioned by Cornerhouse at the same time as ours. Afterwards there will be a Q&A session with me and Billy (Hum's composer), as well as Mark Haig, who directed the other film. Emily can't make it unfortunately, but hopefully Billy and I will be enough. Tickets for the premiere and Q&A event can be purchased here: http://www.exposuresfestival.co.uk/programme

Hope to see you there!

What's this? What's this?

We...

have...

finished...

our...

film!

When mama was moth

We finished our stop motion shoot today, and we actually managed to do all the shots we planned. We then started working on a few experimental, unplanned shots when our new strobe light broke. Stupid strobe light. However, before it broke the strobe light did help us light this linetest of a moth, which we are quite pleased with:

Here is a photo of the moth model when he is not flapping about:

I didn't enjoy making the moth much. I hate moths a lot, and to make this one I had to look at a lot of pictures of moths in close up. It was disgusting.

I'll take the high road from factory to factory

This week we've been doing some stop motion work, using the green screen studio at Factory in Manchester. I am pleased to say that I didn't mess up the oil pastel animation - well there's a bit of a funny bump, but we've decided it is part of the charm! We've been doing lots of paper cut out animation too, and some experiments with a strobe light which we are very pleased with.

Does this drawing here look scary to you? I hope it does at least a little.

I recollect the violence of the struggle

Here's another linetest from the new film...

We did this in TV Paint and comped it in After Effects. It's not done - definitely not done - but the main animation is.

An empty space to fill in

Still working on the new film, and here is a nice oil pastel drawing from it. We've decided to do a couple of sequences hand drawn with oil pastel. I've not finished the first sequence yet, but I think I'm going to need to buy some more pastels! I had forgotten how long it takes colouring by hand onto paper. The last time I did this was for my graduation film... It's straight-ahead rather than keyframe animation because I'm drawing straight into an old, found book. Hope I don't mess it up...

And here's Emily!

She's cutting out and making a paper model in this picture. Using her magic powers, Emily then makes the paper model actually glow...

Amazing. What will the paper models be in the film? They will be mountains of course.

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out

Some new film artwork...it's the moon...

I think last night you were driving circles around me

Some new film artwork:

Got me a movie, I want you to know

Very happily, Emily and I have won funding to make a new film. It will be our third film, and the second to be funded, which is great. Cornerhouse, Mackinnon & Saunders and Vision & Media are the generous people helping us out. We've been working on it for quite a few weeks, but didn't want to post something until we were a bit further down the line. The film's story was partly inspired by our colleague Nikky Norton, who is a poet and playwright also based in Manchester...but the exact narrative details will be a surprise! However I will say that it is an abstract, experimental film.

I will try and post regular updates in between the actual animating, and here is the first: a little linetest. Don't blink or you'll miss it. (I probably should have put it on a loop!)