Birds

What’s this then? Ooh look, it’s some new work, at long last! Well, I say new- this piece is actually about a month old now- I’ve just been super s l o w getting this blog out.

I sometimes go through these stages where I look at my work and think that it really needs loosening up. Or it’s boring/ same-y etc. When I have these feelings, I decide to give myself small exercises to get me feeling less like what I’ve just described. Sometimes these go completely ‘wrong’ (or not what I intended), resulting in feeling worse about my work, though sometimes they turn out quite nicely and makes me feel like I’ve moved my work forward. This is the latter.

I decided to do some silhouettes of a flock of birds flying, because it seemed like a fun clip to make, plus completely aside from anything I’ve ever done before. Or at least aside from a lot of my recent work. I also knew it would be a fairly quick clip to create, whilst still being effective. To be able to produce something quickly was important for me in this exercise, because I didn’t want to be working on something for weeks just doing an hour or two here and there, feeling I was making little progress. It needed to be something I could do in a weekend.

Completing a piece of work was an important factor of this exercise, because it feels like I’ve not managed to complete anything of my own for a while (besides that of what I’m doing in my day job), despite me working on a few bits and pieces- though all are taking a long time.

This clip was great for pushing me away from my usual work, plus it was nice to finally have completed something new outside of my amazing job (which is also animating, but unfortunately can’t share anything from it just yet). Keep your eyes out on Netflix for it’s release later this year.

I decided to go super simple with this one in terms of both style and colour palette. I don’t often work with silhouettes, but this shot of birds lent itself to working in that way nicely and I feel it really paid off for this clip- and definitely something I’d love to bring into future projects of mine. I also inverted the colours- usually I’d do black on white, not the other way around, so this clip was really useful in helping me try techniques I usually wouldn’t.

I love how the end result looks and I especially like how it’s shown me that a clip doesn’t have to be over complex for it to work as a piece. More like this going forward then, perhaps…

So these birds are not the only animation in this blog post- I also have another clip to share (well isn’t today your lucky day)- you can tell how behind I am with my blog! Here is yet another person talking on the phone (I’m sure that’s my most common piece of work I make). I have no idea why, I think I’m just drawn to animating that! 

The background this time is a collage from old art of mine and sudoko puzzles, which I cut up and scanned in. I liked the fact that art which doesn’t have much meaning to me anymore was able to take on a new life in another piece of work. Plus a great way to be able to recycle (or maybe upcycle is the preferred term?) some of my work, before it gets put in the waste paper. I love the textures this created and is also very much in keeping with my love of merging analogue and digital techniques.