I forgot something - you'll just have to imagine it

I forgot something – you’ll just have to imagine it.  When the vicar does an arc onto the stage on his bike I thought it’d sound good to have a bike bell on the soundtrack.  I heard it once on a TV show with puppets, I can’t remember the name but I was the target audience.  They made a joke about Walter Raleigh and a bike bell rang. It’s my sort of humour and that little thing has stuck with me. I liked the sound.  Anyway - I forgot to do it so you’ll just have to imagine it.  I reckon it’s good to leave a few things not done.  It means you can get going onto the next thing before the paint dries and you can still smell the fumes. Ugh, I was thinking about the varnish I didn’t want to use but had to.  It ate the surface off my work and for the first time in the while project I felt sick – because I should have said “no” one more time than I did.  I needed an adult to help me.  Belinda couldn’t comment but her eyes twinkled for me and I got the message and felt better and went home.  Where was I?  Eat more salad and go easy on the coffee. 

my other light princess video diaries

here are parts three and four of my Light Princess video diaries:

I didn't make any more after part four . . . I did film myself a little more after this, but a lot of the animation-work we had done got cut because of script changes so I sounded a bit depressed and it wouldn't be much fun to watch me sitting on the roof of the National Theatre in the rain telling you that.  And then I stopped filming the video diaries completely as we kept up with the changes to the work during all the previews . . . it's tricky making animations for live theatre, I guess it would be fun to do again sometime, but it takes up a lot of your energy trying to remain nice.

The Light Princess - Matthew's video diaries parts one & two

I filmed myself while I was making the animations, mainly so I had someone to talk to.  Why don't you watch parts one and two here . . .

The Light Princess - designing and animating a scene

The process of making little films for this musical is a bit different to how I normally work, there are more people in the chain that links the first sketches to showing an audience, so I thought I would show you some of the process.  This is a scene that got cut from the show during script re-writes.

This scene is from the prologue, an animated cartoon at the beginning of the show, played on the big screen, like at the cinema, and a voiceover sung by a couple of actors.  The prologue explains the back story and introduces some of the characters.  I know . . you know what a prologue is.  ok - here is my first storyboard for this scene to show my ideas to the director, writer and designer:

This is Althea (the light princess) attempting to knight someone but losing grip of the sword and floating away (she has no gravity and these scenes were intended to show different variations on that idea).

They liked it but suggested she probably shouldn't be-head someone.  I changed it to his hand, it has to be funny, doesn't it?

I also changed the format to fit within the frame designed by Rae Smith the designer, a slightly more 4:3 shape.  Depending on whether the characters in the prologue are also performed by actors in the live elements of the show affected how I drew them to some extent.  My cut-out versions of the characters would have to look in some way the same as Rae Smith's costume designs.

Sir Tom was just a prologue character so it was up to me to do what I want, and Althea is seen here as a 5 year old girl, so the only design stipulation was to give her red hair.

Althea's father, the King, got added to this scene a little later and he is in the show all the way through so his cut-out version has to refer to the on-stage version.  I like to do this mostly with attitude and one or two strong shapes rather than try to recreate any kind of accurate silhouette.

I have to balance my own animated world feeling cohesive with looking like it is has some place within the world of Rae's stage designs.  We worked a lot with adding block areas of colour and general themes of yellow, round and softer (Lagobel) versus blue spiky and colder / darker (Sealand), or Tintin and Moomins as Rae helpfully described it for me.  

The next stage was to animate a test version.

The animations are made mostly from cut out black card - some of the characters are puppets with moving joints, others just have a few replacement parts, the repetition of using small sequences of replacement parts suits the 2D block colour shapes and the low frame rate.

Sir Tom has a walk cycle made of 3 sets of legs:

Here you can watch the scene (althea is bald, I hadn't worked out how to do her hair yet):

The next step is to show the director and designer and get a bit of feedback.  Marianne Elliott (the director) suggested we added the King pushing / forcing his daughter on, showing that she is reluctant to take anything seriously (Althea, not Marianne) so every element of the scene is moving the story forward and enforcing the bits that are important for the audience to understand (not just that a floating girl comes and chops a man's hand off).

Each character I animate separately and then we (that is Emma Pile and Lawrence Rowell who worked with me on this) would layer them together to create the finished picture.  We built this into our system to it would be easier to edit and make inevitable timing changes once the show started to develop.  

We hadn't quite lined up the king fully here to match Althea's movements (after effects doesn't like my low frame rates), and Althea doesn't have red hair yet, but the scene got cut from the script before we needed to take it any further.  

The people walking across the screen are Lagobellans. they live in the kingdom, I used them to wipe on and off between scenes to create transitions that would feel innate and keep the animation alive and moving forward and not use fades or cuts.  If you've seen the show that ideal ALMOST survived the process . . not quite, but enough.  

Althea's movement has a few extra pieces to enable all the movements.  Working this way with replacement pieces means you have to think through the characters movement and what they are going to do once they are on screen before you switch on the camera.  There is still room for spontaneity, often a little accidental slip of the puppet can be turned to your advantage  - here I didn't plan to have her sway back and forth with the sword but it just came about as I was animating the scene and I liked it.  

Most of the scenes I just film one take -  although I might loose a bit of accuracy or finesse I think it captures the life a lot better.  I once heard someone talk about having a rock and roll swagger in their work and that appeals to me, although I've used that phrase twice out loud when working with a  director, hoping to explain how my puppets will work and there has been a flash of panic both times.  Or maybe they think I sound pretentious.  

The Light Princess - Tori Amos musical - I'm almost done

it's the last few days now of tightening up the show before it's ready to let me go, I haven't seen any daylight for a few months, creating hand-made stop-motion films for a live theatre show that gets edited and refined daily is hard to keep up with, one small cut or tempo change can easily chop away 2 or 3 weeks of our work here in animation-land.  luckily I am not doing it alone, it's hard to be a one man animation department, that's what Wayne White said when I watched his film for a bit of moral support halfway through this project - beauty is embarrassing - and I have Emma Pile and Lawrence Rowell working with me all hours every day to help with the changes, and they are nice people to be around, it's been fun up here in the dark.

It's hard to deal with your thoughts when something gets cut that you think is good, but then you just have to sit down and come up with more good things to fill the gaps and patch the joins, and then you realise its actually made it better.

Some of you have already been to see it and sent me nice messages. thanks for your support.

Here are a couple of pictures of my work from the prologue . . . oh yeah, my bit is mainly in the first 4 minutes so if you're a latecomer you might wonder what I'm making such a fuss about . .

And as there is a big projector onstage to show the animations I've also created a few backdrops . . . here's a palace interior . . . it looks a bit photoshoppy but onstage with lights and smoke and actors it's not bad . . . 

The Light Princess horse animation test

here's another thing from my animations for The Light Princess, I'm not sure if this horse is staying or not now, I think i ran out of screen-time for it:

the ANIMATION IS FUN!! song

replacement stop-motion animating

So . . . I haven't worked on my animation for a few weeks . . . you can watch my latest video diary to see what's been going on in my life  . . being self-employed is hard, to continue to remain motivated day after day means working hard on maintaining your self-esteem, and this can be easily destroyed in many ways - reading what critics think of your work, for example, can be really stupid and pointless, but I always end up doing it . . . it's pointless to be hurt by the opinions of someone that has turned up for 45 minutes, taken one glance at what you've been working on for maybe 9 or 10 months, and not bothered to engage any further with the rest of your work or even try to begin to understand what you are doing, they don't ask any questions, or discuss your work within any interesting context . . . it'd be like me judging their lives just based on their little byline photographs (which, of course, I do)  . . . but yet I can't wait to read these things, and I get upset every time.  Critics never really like my work, never, and although I basically understand this is ultimately a good thing I still get upset for a few days (or weeks) and imagine how I can avenge myself.   Hmm.  So it's been an un-healthily mental few weeks.  Then I remembered my own advice about how just getting on with your work is GOOD FOR YOU, and I started to get on with animating again and went for one of the more complicated scenes.  And this week has gone by very fast and I haven't seen any daylight.  I only left the house to see John Prine last night, one of the most life-affirming people I have ever spent time in the presence of, he sings and you realise nothing else matters apart from getting on with what you want to do.  Check him out if you already haven't by now.  

This is scene where Peter gives Lily a little present he's made for her, a clockwork motorbike with the two of them riding about happily on its back.  I've always been inspired by automate makers like Paul Spooner and Tim Hunkin (you might have seen their work at the Science Museum, the Eden Project, London Zoo, Southwold Pier or at Cabaret Mechanical Theatre exhibitions) and this is a way for me to pay tribute to their influence (in an oblique way, as they don't make clockwork toys that run around the table . . . )

To achieve a convincing clockwork key-turning effect within this 2D cardboard world I have been using a system of replacement cut-out pieces, photographing them in a sequence, to make it look like the key is turning in the machine as it rides around.  I could have just cut out the key 7 or 8 times in different positions and swap them over one at a time on the same bike as it moved around, but to look like it was really anchored in the bike toy it was better and more convincing to also cut out a new bike for each position of the key turning.  This had the benefit of the motorbike looking slightly more charmingly home-made (as if by Peter) as little imperfections and difference occur each time I cut the bike out and get played out as it is animated.  

I made 7 bikes to complete the winding key cycle:

and then I tested it and it didn't work.   

And also I noticed that I hadn't even properly finished cutting out all then pieces even, I hadn't cut out all the mouths and so looked like they were gulping a bit weirdly.  

When I cut out the keys I thought I had observed the real-life key turning really accurately, from this guy:

but it just was all wrong.  This is the thing about films and animation - if it doesn't look right it just isn't right, you can't deceive yourself that it'll look fine once all the other fancy stuff has been added, it won't.  So I had another look at the robot (actually is it a martian?) and cut it all out AGAIN.  This time it worked . . . 

You can check out my video diary below, it's quite a long one, and I've got a little more to say about this  week's work, I've been building up the physical layers of the animation to create the room settings and furniture so I'll continue writing this later to show you some of that. Meanwhile, thanks a lot for reading.    

the little match girl passion: shadow world

The central figure in this story is obviously the match girl herself, and this means the way everything else is described visually has to lead out of the way she is made.  I use shadow puppets to portray her in this, and so other parts of the story either go forward from this - her visions for example are "extra" real in that they are 3D painted models, so they feel hyper-real to her, a cardboard girl, and then other people - the anonymous crowds in the city - are smudgey chalk animated loops, they have no individual character, no discernible strength or edges, but rather are lumps of storytelling devices, I imagined Carol by Patricia Highsmith when I was thinking of the crowd scenes, 1930s or 40s busy wintery crowds getting on with stuff in the city, and nothing to do with us or the story we are here to listen to, well, except to judge, maybe, as this is a Passion.  

In earlier shows I have projected the shadow puppets and backgrounds simultaneously from an O.H.P. onto a screen, but here, as my processes have developed over the last couple of years, I am creating a much more layered piece, building up cut-out painted skyscrapers, the chalk animations, little models with lights and holes and clear coloured plastic - I perform the black cut-out cardboard shadow puppets in front of the camera, or sometimes behind a paper screen, like they did in the olden days . . . and it's still basically light and shadows, and here this means that a lot of the main puppet figures of the match girl are almost little cardboard automata - like two of my favourite artists Paul Spooner and Tim Hunkin - with one or two little functions to each perform to tell a specific piece of the story. 

I made a video that explains a bit more of this and shows you some of the puppets actually moving . . . 

The Little Match Girl Passion: making the 3D world of her visions

So I've been working on The Little Match Girl Passion again this week.  In this live-animation I'm making for it I'm trying to create a world that is three-dimensional but made up of 2-D flat layers - drawn animations projected onto paper screens, paper cut-out shadow puppets, and here is the city for example, buildings drawn onto corrugated card and laid out in parallel formations . . .

when the match girl has her visions, however - when she strikes a match to keep warm and beautiful things reveal themselves in its glow - I wanted to make these in a different way, and I thought it would be somehow extra-real in this 2-D environment if everything in the visions was an actual three-dimensional object, like this dining room table at Christmas.  The white plate behind the cake in this picture is empty because its where the goose was, but in her vision the goose jumps up and runs away.

Here is a video where I show you some of these scenes I've built this week, and a couple of the puppets that live in those worlds . . .

The Little Match Girl Passion crowd animations

I've been working on some of the background animations for David Lang's The Little Match Girl Passion that I'm making a live-animation for, commissioned by Opera North, and wanted to show you some of it.  I've only done a very rough edit so far - rough in terms of compositing, the visual side of it I'm happy with.  I mostly use animations in live shows to create skies, weather conditions, journeys - things that don't have actual people or animals in, and I was trying to justify why it was okay to have some things live and some things as filmed animations if there were people in the scenes, but to me I feel that the looping crowd scenes echo the looping text in the music, and I think its a way of saying to you as the viewer you can disregard these big groups of people as anything more important than all you see here, they are like the clouds going by, or the snow, repeating and never-ending, the brain gets the hang of a loop quite quickly I think and disengages if it looks like nothing is going to happen other than repetition, so I will be able to then puppet the main character  - the match girl - live in front of these crowds.  Its her story, it happens to be happening right now as we tell this story, whereas there will always be a crowd, the city is a never ending loop of anonymous people.  Maybe I need to condense those sentences down a bit if I want to try and talk about this again, haha, but I hope you understand what I mean.

I'm working in charcoal for this, it has a dirty and dusty quality that feels suitable, kind of like I'm drawing with her burnt out matches, and actually when I opened the packet, i'd not bought this variety before, it looked like a little prop from a puppet film for her matches . . .

I was inspired to work this way watching William Kentridge's films.  I'm sure other people work this way too, but I haven't seen anyone else with such a confident rawness.   The basic technique is to draw an image, take a shot, erase it and draw the next image over the top, and as you erase each image and move forward it leaves behind a ghostly trace of the sequence.

And also as bits of charcoal crumble off (if you are working on a horizontal flat surface) they build up nicely around where the crowd's feet are supposed to be and look like footprints and dirty snow.

In my head I was trying to live in the worlds of Edward Gorey,  Joel Stewart and Lemony Snicket, which would be a strange but fun world. . . .

Here is a rough edit of the film:

PL&TN: day 14

I was out late watching the opening olympic things last night so I haven't got much done, but today I made a side-view of Peter, the main character - I've already made it as a 3/4 view, but to make him run I need his legs to be able to fully cross each other, i.e. pivot from the same place at the bottom of his body, on the 3/4 view each leg has its own pivot point.  And guess what?  I made a little film while I was doing it so you watch the thing take shape as I thought it'd be fun!

and here is a photo of the finished puppet.  It'll have replaceable heads to I can change the expressions easily while it is running  . . . .

PL&TN: day 13

Hello . . . I finished the storyboard for my other show and now I'm working on the animation again.  Meanwhile I also took a couple of days off to lie in the sun and somehow solved some of the unfinished story issues while I was doing nothing.  oh, actually I did read a book about Sal Mineo.  So now that I have nothing left to design - because I thought I had a massive clockwork machine to design and possibly even make out of cardboard for picture reference, but I don't, the answer was already within the story (sorry to be mysterious at this stage) - I have now started cutting everything out, and organising scene lists.  Weirdly it's exactly 100 scenes at the moment.

A lot of the puppets are jointed so I can manipulate them in the same way as a 3D stop motion puppet:

. . . I'll be making another one tomorrow so I might film that process to show you.  For some of the really wide shots I have to make quite small puppets and as they're too small to be jointed I instead make a series of replacement puppets, one for each movement.  I tend to keep it to about 4 or 5 pieces, so it doesn't end up looking too professional . . . 

They're quite small, here is the main character next to a 5p . . . 

Also started cutting out backgrounds - 

And in other news, something has bitten me and my right arm has become massive.  Hope it becomes normal soon . . . now i'm finishing early to cycle into East London to go and watch the Olympic opening ceremony.