Hand Embroidered Animated Background

Helloooo! I finally have another new piece of animation to share- yay! It was November last year since I last completed a moving clip. So, yes, new work is still going quite slowly, but that’s not to say I’m not working on anything bigger behind the scenes (more on that in another post)…

If you’re a regular here, then you’ll know that embroidery is quite a big thing in my life at the moment. So naturally, I wanted to test out how an embroidered background would look against some animation drawn digitally. Back in February I started a short animated clip of someone walking up some stairs- just to kind of get me going again after having worked on a 16 month contract as an editor. I liked what I created for the character side of it, but I was really struggling to know what to do for the background. I have had the thought in my head for a while of trying an embroidered background, so a few weeks later, I put two and two together and decided that’s what I’ll do to finish this piece!

The hoop was big- like 12 inches big, so of course it took it’s sweet time to complete. But I do really enjoy the process of embroidery, I find it super relaxing and love just sticking on a podcast or album as I watch my fabric laboriously take shape and become a picture!

The original background was quite boring in my opinion- a grey wall, which didn’t feel that appealing to make an embroidery of. So I decided to ‘jazz it up’ a bit and make the wall at the back into bricks, using a colour scheme of five different threads. I personally think the result looks really vibrant and eye catching.

The original background

The background I created

At first when I comped the animation and background together, they didn’t really gel that well, but after drawing in a shadow under the feet, it really tied the piece together and integrated the background with the foreground animation nicely. This definitely has potential as a way to go about creating backgrounds for a longer project in the future. I am also thinking of a few ideas for a fully embroidered animation. And yes, I am a bit mad. But I am inundated with various project ideas currently, so I think they’ll have to come before this one! Anyway, as usual, keep your eyes out on here for all my latest project updates/ ramblings etc! Here’s the animation:

Aldershot Town FC

Photos from Aldershot Town FC 0-3 Boreham Wood, National League 13/4/24, at the Recreation Ground (Aldershot). Full set HERE. Ten below:

Road to Wembley: Semi Final

For the semi final's, we decided upon Tottenham Hotspur Women v Leicester City Women. This was the first time both of these teams reached this round of the competition, therefore in my opinion this was the more interesting fixture of the two (the other being last years finalists: Manchester United against Chelsea). Making this game even more appealing was the fact it was staged at the all shiny and new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. I was fortunate enough to gain pitchside access to photograph this tie- now the biggest stadium I have photographed in!

I wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy photographing in such a big stadium and I didn't know if my kit would quite be up to it: I don't have the longest lens and I only have one camera body. But it was actually a thoroughly enjoyable and unforgettable experience. All the photographers were situated very close to the pitch (I was worried that we'd all be miles away), so it turned out my kit was perfectly fine and I'm super pleased with the set of photographs I took. The stadium is extremely impressive and definitely lives up to all the hype. Would highly recommend a visit if you haven't already been there. Spurs Women actually play there again towards the end of the season for their last home WSL fixture against West Ham.

Stadium praising aside(!), back to the FA Cup fixture: Leicester scored early and held on for the majority of the game, until Spurs equalised in the 83rd minute. Neither team could break the deadlock in the remaining minutes, so 30 minutes of extra time followed. Before Spurs faced another penalty shoot out like in their previous round, Scotland international Martha Thomas hit the back of the net in the 118th minute in front of 18078 fans, sending Spurs to the FA Cup Final for the first time in history! They will face Manchester United at Wembley Stadium on Sunday 12th May and I am so very excited!

You can view my full set of photos HERE and as usual, 10 below:

Road to Wembley: Quarter Final

Almost 4 weeks on from the match we attended for this round, I finally got round to editing my photos: ta-da! The match was Brighton & Hove Albion Women against Manchester United Women, with the hosts losing four goals to nothing. This was the second time seeing both clubs in this season's FA Cup and I feel the result was rather predictable...

Ten below as usual and you can view the full set HERE!