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 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 . . .

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.