Creatures

From among all the animation techniques available at the present time I acknowledge stop-motion as my best option as it happens to work in perfectly with my own particular artistic approach. I find it both fascinating and exhilarating to see how a style of animation  based on technical methods first developed in the early decades of the 1900’s  still has the capacity to grow and evolve.

If stop motion still in the avant-garde to-day is it not in great part due to Digital and IT? My plan of action began with organizing my work space. Before long I had setup a little workshop not too far from  my home.

In peace and quiet I’d sit there and in my head start to run through all possible fantastical settings for my animation characters. The physical ambience and the atmosphere in which they’d move around, interact and ‘recite’. The style of their dress and the colours palette used. These general questions occupied my mind before setting down to work out the finer details. I came to elaborate each character individually; each was to have his or her own personality clearly separate and defined.

Physically it was not just their size and demeanor that had to be determined but also I had to foresee and design the internal mechanism which I would have to construct manually and insert into each and all. These internal mechanisms would provide them with the gift of movement and essentially that ability to move would be at the basis of their life force. A practical solution to all of these problems was required and in the cerebral search for solutions my project came to be elaborated in ever greater detail. Establishing a valid procedure for the actual construction of my cartoon characters as ‘dolls’ would allow me to advance in the project to another stage.

The project

I knew at this point that it was necessary to get my characters to ‘move house'; out of the physical and into the virtual. They had to be relocated into a digital environment. It was there and there only that they could truly come to life. Also it was by transferring them over into a digital setting that I could get down to planning and designing  their  internal mechanical structure. I also knew that once I had elaborated a prototype model  I’d then be able to construct a ‘mechanical skeleton’ for my characters with the use of a 3D printer.

Reverse engineering and rapid prototyping proved to be a great help and at the actual production stage the final results achieved using Silicone rubber were fantastic. This procedure allowed me to hand make most of the ‘doll’ parts and to materially assemble each ‘doll’ as a unique Art object which could be presented as such independently of their role in graphic animation.

Finally, I don’t mind admitting that in the course of this experimental project all of my skills as an ‘artisan’ have been tested to the full. Many false starts were abandoned and mistakes made and acknowledged along the way but in the end the satisfaction of achievement has been immense as well.