Interview: Dell Stewart

(Image of Dell working at Harvest Workroom on her current residency)
Image Source: Harvest Workroom

It's been a while since we have done an interview here and I am very excited that our latest interview is with Dell Stewart as I have been a fan of her artwork and blog for a while. As mentioned in my previous post Dell is teaching a 4 day stop-motion workshop at Harvest Textiles from the 2nd - 5th April for teens. In addition to the workshop Dell is currently participating in a residency at Harvest Workroom working on experiments with printing which will be used in a handmade book and animation.  You will be able to view the animation at the Harvest Workroom window (510- 512 Lygon Street, East Brunswick) as it progresses over the residency. 


Dell amazes me with her ability to work so well across many artistic disciplines and also her genuine passion and support for other people's art, craft, design and animation (which you can see through her blog) is inspiring.


So here we go - a little conversation with Dell about her stop-motion work

1. Tell us a little about your arts/design background

I have been making things as long as I can remember. I studied Fine Art – Printmaking and Drawing – in Queensland. I then moved to Melbourne and later studied Animation and Interactive media at R.M.I.T. I have been exhibiting regularly since art school, everything from drawing, installation and photography to animation, clothing and textiles.

2. When did you first discover stop-motion animation?

I guess I sort of fell into animation. I remember discovering after effects on a friends computer and playing around with it, I was excited enough to think I could do some animation for my first exhibition in Melbourne at First Floor artist's and writer's space. This seems crazy to me now, and I get a rash just considering most editing and post production software now. Some rotoscoped drawn animation I did for an exhibition at Utopian Slumps in 2007, Dead to the World.

 

I later discovered stop motion at R.M.I.T. but at the time I was definitely more interested in drawing, both on paper and in the computer. Annemarie Szeleczky was doing her Masters at A.I.M. at the time, working with found objects on glass in layers under the camera, I do remember loving her multi-layered collages to music. Just through seeing so much animation during my time at A.I.M. and watching other students working on various projects opened up the possibilities for me.

3. Do you have any particular favourite stop-motion works or other artists that inspire you?

 Andrew Thomas Huang. Amazing!

Allison Schulnik's  Forest. and Mound. 

FOREST - Allison Schulnik from FIBRA on Vimeo.

Also Maricor/Maricar, PES  short and sweet, Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine and my beloved husband Adam Cruickshank!

Early on it'd have to be Terry Gilliam, maybe the first stop motion I ever saw?

4. What mediums do you like to work with to create your sets and characters?

Stop motion appeals to me for it's rich tactility. With better quality cameras and the ease of shooting on digital you can really capture the qualities of whatever you are working with. I'm inclined to work with paper cut-outs as I still love to paint and draw, and I love working with textiles – also other found bits and pieces – anything is possible! Fruit Salad.

I worked with Kate Matthews on an Artist's in Schools project at Wooranna Park Primary where they had a multi layered animation box for the purpose of animating easily with children. It was a fun project and we were delighted by the results, animating with paper cut-outs, rice and spices, photos and collage elements.

International Noses from Kate Matthews on Vimeo.

Smells and Memory from Kate Matthews on Vimeo.

Kate and I have since run school holiday animation workshops at Artplay working with paper cut-outs  and we would love to do more.

What Animal are you? (THURSDAY) from Dell Stewart on Vimeo.

What Animal are You? (SATURDAY) from Dell Stewart on Vimeo.

What Animal are You? (FRIDAY) from Dell Stewart on Vimeo.

What Animal are You? (WEDNESDAY) from Dell Stewart on Vimeo.

5. What has been your favourite stop-motion piece that you have worked on?

I didn't do any stop motion in this project (I was drawing) but 'It's Like That' by the Southern Ladies Animation Group. The puppets were incredible knitted birds, beautifully animated by Sharon Parker, Justine Wallace, Sophie Raymond, and Diana Ward.

Its Like That from Diana Ward on Vimeo.

6. Can you talk a little on the processes used and experience of making this stop-motion animation?

It was a collaborative process, an idea brought to the group by Nicole Mackinnon, that basically everyone felt needed to be told. 'It’s Like That' uses the voices of 3 refugee children held in mandatory detention under the Migration Act 1958. They were interviewed over the phone by ABC journalist Jacqueline Arias. Once the soundtrack was edited it was broken up into sections for each animator to work on, with the stop motion characters narrating and holding the story together. This story is sadly still as relevant today as it was in 2003. Watch it! I drew the firey rice.

And read about it:

http://aso.gov.au/titles/shorts/its-like-that/notes/

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/14/1068674377213.html

7. What are your future plans in animation? Do you have anything in the pipeline that you would like to talk about?

I'm currently doing a residency at Harvest Workroom  and I hope to do some more stop-motion workshops later this year, at both Craft Victoria and Harvest textiles. My own projects might be limited to some experiments to go along with music and a few elements for my exhibition at West Space  later in the year. 

Interview: Isobel Knowles

Isobel Knowles Showreel June 2011 from Isobel Knowles on Vimeo.

I first discovered Isobel Knowles when I went to a Craft Victoria talk called Make It, Design It, Fund It a couple of years ago. An Experimenta catalogue was circulated and flicking through stumbled upon Isobel's amazing artwork with Van Sowerwine called You Were In My Dream. I was really interested in stop-motion at the time and had experimented with using it in my own artworks but couldn't believe the amazing conceptual use of the medium in their work. This was also long before I dreamed of starting this blog so I can't believe I am here right now interviewing Isobel about her work and in particular the work that inspired me so much!

I think I had inspiration overload reading about Isobel's inspirations - so many great new people to find out about. If you would like to see more of Isobel's work you can go to her website here or her Vimeo channel here.

Tell us a little about your arts/design background

I was one of those kids who would draw and draw. I chose art in school wherever I could and started animating in my final year of high school. I went on to study Media Arts at RMIT where I got into making animations for installation in galleries and made a few short films as well. I started collaborating with Van Sowerwine at university and we have had a productive working relationship ever since.

(Image of Clara from the short film Clara (c) Film Camp, Directed by Van Sowerine .)

I made a music video for Architecture in Helsinki just after I graduated and during the production of it they asked me to join in and play trumpet with them. It was such a great experience but at the same time it was tricky leading a double creative life. I was shooting a short film, Clara, with Van and recording with Architecture in Helsinki at the same time and it was a difficult balance. The band took over and became a full time occupation for a couple of years. I had a great time and fell into making music videos because of all these music connections I was making. It was a lot of fun!

After I left the band I spent time overseas trading music videos for accommodation. When I came back to Melbourne I decided I wanted to do animation full time. I have managed to strike a good balance between artistic projects and commissioned work and I'm enjoying it immensely!

When did you first discover stop-motion animation?

Sesame Street! I loved that show to death. All those different vignettes made by incredibly talented animation artists!

I discovered stop-motion for myself when I started making animations in high school. The first few were pretty silly but for my graduating project I made an 8 minute alphabet with 26 different styles of animation to teach myself a broad range of techniques. There was a lot of stop-motion in there. Clay, cut-paper, objects, wire sculpture. I had a lot of fun with it.

ABC from Isobel Knowles on Vimeo.

Do you have any particular favourite stop-motion works or other artists that inspire you?

(Image still from Lotte Reiniger's Papageno 1935)

So many! Lotte Reiniger is my all time favourite paper cut animator. Suzy Templeton's Dog and her version of Peter and the Wolf are really beautiful puppet films. I loved Sinna Mann by Anita Killi. David Daniels stratacut animations are mind-melting. Yuri Norstein's Hedgehog in the Fog has the most beautifully made 2d puppets. Jan Svankmejer wins for amazing concepts. I love kids shows like Towser, Magic Roundabout, Gumby and Spanish cartoon Capelito. Fantastic Mr Fox was a very exciting addition to the animated feature film world.

(Image still from the children's series The Magic Roundabout)

(Image still from Yuri Norstein's Hedgehog in the Fog)

What mediums do you like to work with to create your sets and characters?

Anything really! You Were In My Dream had a lot of real tree branches which I loved the look of. Feathers, dried flowers, dried leaves. We tried to use as much natural material as possible and interspersed that with model making and craft supplies. I also love using cardboard. I recently made a factory set out of shoeboxes and felt. It was pretty free-form - just hacking away at cardboard with minimal precision, doing all measurements by eye. Van and I continued that lo-fi cardboard aesthetic with our new work that's in production now.

(Image of Isobel animating her factory in her collaboration with Cat Rabbit. Image source via Cat Rabbit's Website)

(Image still of a beautiful paper cut bird from You Were in My Dreams)

What has been your favourite stop-motion piece that you have worked on?

You Were In My Dream installation documentation from Isobel Knowles on Vimeo.

It's hard - like choosing a favourite child! I really enjoyed shooting You Were In My Dream. It was a collaboration with Van and I love working together with her on something big. I really loved animating the character transforming into various animals and the set was so pretty to look at all day long. But Clara was such a great project to work on too. We had decent funding so we got to use a lot of high-end equipment. We also shot it on 16mm and it was always such a rush at the end of each week when we'd take our roll of film off to be developed and watch the rushes from the week before.

Can you talk a little on the processes used and experience of making this stop-motion animation? 

I'll talk about You Were In My Dream since it's the most recent.

We originally wanted to make a 3d puppet animation like the ones we'd done together before but because of the animation needing to incorporate a live video feed of a face onto the animated character's face we decided that a 2d puppet would work better. We still wanted the sense of depth though so we made these giant sets full of the things I mentioned above and added a sheet of perspex with the cut paper 2d characters and sets to the top of that. I was really happy with how it looked in the end.

(Image still from the artwork You Were In My Dreams in use by Isobel and Van. You can see how their faces are projected into the stop-motion animation!)

(Image of a character in the process of being animated with the blank face which allowed for the projection of the viewers face to be placed there later when in use)

Our setup consisted of a custom animation bench which held the camera perpendicular to the set and had a tracking system for the set to travel left and right. The sets were 120mm long which gave us roughly three screens in length. It was important for the forest to feel quite big and like the character could run around and explore a large area. We had one set for the forest floor and one for the tree tops. We used a digital SLR connected to the computer and used Dragon Stop-Motion to capture and play back the animation. We had to use Flash for the interactive element.

(Image of Isobel on the right and Van on the left hard at work on the project)

The animation took a really long time. A lot longer than we'd expected. Van had just had a baby so I think we may have spent too much time tickling little toes! We animated about fifteen minutes worth of footage and because it's interactive and non-linear, people generally see two or three minutes at the most. It was important to the work, though to create a seemingly endless world of possibility. In addition to the fifteen minutes of stop-motion we had to animate a digital mask for the video to sit on top of the character's face. For every frame in the stop-motion we had to do a frame in Flash! So looking back it was an awful lot of work. Of course you never realise this before you begin!

(Image of a frog being animated bit by bit with a pair of tweezers!)

(Image of some of the many characters they would have cut out)

We were working to vague storyboards but most of it was on the fly editing decisions. Because we were shooting on a flat plane, though, we really only had the choice between long shot or closeup. I think this made it more manageable to shoot without a proper storyboard.

(Image of the final artwork being exhibited)

Do you think there is a resurgence in stop-motion animation in the recent years?

I think with digital cameras becoming cheaper and better, stop-motion has become more viable again. Consumer digital cameras are perfect stop motion tools so it's easy for anyone to try which is always a good breeding ground for new and exciting work.

After years of animation becoming predominantly digital and the 3d motion graphics developing into the default animated style, I think people are excited to see stop-motion again. There's still something very magical about an inanimate object moving around like it's alive that you just can't achieve in any other medium.

Do you prefer working on collaborations with other artists/clients or do you prefer creating from ideas of your own?

I like both worlds equally. I prefer spending the bulk of my time realising my own creative ideas but I love being able to make something that serves a purpose. It's like fitting a jigsaw together. Having constraints makes it exciting to find a solution for the challenge. It's also nice to be part of a creative community in this way. I've been very lucky with clients though, and pretty much find myself working for and with friends most of the time.

(Image Still from Isobels collaboration with Cat Rabbit. Source via Cat Rabbit's Website)

What are your future plans in animation? Do you have any exciting collaborations, artworks or music videos in the pipeline that you would like to talk about?

(Image still from a test animation on My Good Half . Isobel's collaboration with Anna Jeffries)

I'm working on a new artwork with my friend and collaborator Van Sowerwine. It's an interactive animation that is semi-stop-motion. The backgrounds are shot to camera and the characters are being done digitally. It's looking pretty good so far! We built a train interior and set up two enormous lazy susans with sets on them. The sets are cardboard renditions of garages, back fences and houses. Corrugated cardboard really does look like corrugated iron, especially when you do some texta tagging! We're exhibiting it in the Melbourne International Arts Festival at Screen Space in October so look out for it!

I'm also planning to do some more work with the wonderful Cat Rabbit which will be a delight I'm sure.

And a new collaboration is on the horizon with director, Anna Jeffries, who has written a script about some siamese twins from 16th Century Scotland. Hopefully that will get off the ground early next year.

I like how things have been developing so far and I'm sure finding it easy to keep busy animating! I'd love to do more short film work and maybe go work somewhere overseas for a while. Maybe Poland or Estonia. Seems like a girl like me could learn a thing or two from Eastern Europe!

Melbourne International Animation Festival Features and Interviews

(image source: MIAF)

For all you lovely folk visiting the blog for the first time we have been spending the last week interviewing all the Australian stop motion animation artists featured in this year's Melbourne International Animation Festival. Prior to this we also had the opportunity to interview the festival director Malcolm Turner! If you are interested in checking out any of these interviews please find the links below.

• Malcolm Tuner (MIAF Festival Director)
• Fiona Dalwood (The Batchelor Experience)
• Seamus Spilsbury (Blown Away)
• David Pennay (Remembering Bonegilla)
• Darcy Prendergast (Gravity)
• Chris Kezelos (Zero)
• Michael Greaney (Aww Jeez)

We hope everyone has a great week at the festival and goes along and supports it if they can!

MIAF Feature: Aww Jeez - Michael Greaney

Well we have finally reached the end of our MIAF features and are finishing up with Michael Greaney's film Aww Jeez. Michael's interview is an added bonus as he is currently overseas at Annecy for this very film (which is why we don't have any process shots or sketches!). He was kind enough to send us through a bit of info to share with you and some stills from the film.

Aww Jeez will be screening at the Melbourne International Animation Festival on Wednesday 22nd June at 8pm as part of the International Panorama Programs - Panorama #4: Australian.

Can you tell us a little about the story of Aww Jeez and some of the concepts and theme's within the film?

Aww Jeez is a short clay-animated film that takes religious dieties and puts them in a cheesy 50s sitcom environment. Essentially the story is; God is going away on business, but he doesn't trust his slacker son Jesus not to throw a party while he's gone, so he hires Satan, a former alcoholic, to babysit.

(image source)

The humor of the film is based around making light of religious mythology, while simultaneously exploring the way sit-coms utilise familiar characters and plotlines to create stories and explore ideas. The film really is my personal love letter to the situational comedy genre, so by using characters that almost everybody recognises, it allowed me alot of freedom to run wild, making a mixture of jokes at goofy sitcom cliches (like the flashy main character entrance) and more in depth religion themed humour. Fortunately for me I teamed up with an amazing sound designer and composer on the film named Ryan Granger who did an awesome job realising the kinds of theme music and audio cues which make sitcoms so fun and energetic.

Can you tell us a little about what inspired the look of the film? What made you decide to use stop motion animation instead of other animation techniques?

When I set out creating the look of the film I really wanted to pick a medium which I felt would properly capture the look and feel of a three camera sitcom. Clay-mation was the perfect choice for this, as it allowed me the opportunity to construct sets and control all the elements within, such as lighting and visual compostion, while still maintaining a stylised real world look.

Could you talk a little on the process of developing the main characters and how they came to the final result on screen. Did you have many different prototypes? How did you make them?

The characters are all constructed on several different layers. To begin with I built an armature, which is a basic wire skeleton, for the puppets. The next step involved sculpting the puppets heads out of an amazing little product called super sculpy, which is as malleable as plasticine until it is baked, which makes it completely solid. The final step was to sculpt the rest of the puppets body out of coloured plasticine.

Funnily enough developing the main characters for the film was actually one of the things that took the most amount of time within the build stage of production. I really wanted to build stylised puppets that where still immediately recognizable as the deities they where based on, so this stage was a loop of sculpting, revising and reworking until finally reaching a functional puppet I was happy with.

Another important part of the final realisation of the characters was the voice actors involved. Darcy Prendergast, who played Satan, and Josh Thomas, who voiced God, gave some fantastic performances that really helped to bring those clay puppets to life. In both cases I had both of the guys screaming like maniacs into a microphone trying to get the right kind of insanity I was looking for.

Are there any future projects you can tell us about - stop motion or otherwise?

I'm currently working with the amazing crew at Oh Yeah Wow which is a Melbourne based studio, on a wide variety of projects including stop-motion and live action music videos and commercials. As well as being in the process of writing my next short which will be a rather politically incorrect clay-animated musical comedy.

MIAF Feature: Zero - Christopher Kezelos

(Image source: all image provided by Christopher Kezelos)

Friday's MIAF feature is with Christopher Kezelos talking about his short film Zero.

Zero will be screening at the Melbourne International Animation Festival on Saturday 25th June at 4:15pm as part of the Australian Showcase.

Can you tell us a little about the story of Zero and some of the concepts and themes within the film?

When throwing around concepts for the film, Christine Kezelos the film's Producer and I kept coming back to the idea of a world of numbers. We felt the imagery held ripe potential for a fairytale and allowed us to explore themes of oppression and prejudice that has dominated cultures throughout human history. Even on an individual level, we have all felt marginalised or out cast in one way or another and we knew that this would strike a chord in audiences. We also wanted to show that through the power of love and through the desire to make a difference, one person can change their own lives and the lives of others.

Can you tell us a little about what inspired the look of the film? What made you decide to use stop motion animation instead of other animation techniques?

I had been going through a macro photography phase. The rich textures and short depths of field lent itself perfectly towards stop motion animation and was accesible through my stills camera. Christine and I imagined that characters made of 'wool' would be ideal for this medium, up close the individual fibres and detail was so appealing .

Working with such a low budget, stop motion animation was an accessible technique for us. As we don't have any 2D/3D skills, this was something we could physically do ourselves.

Could you talk a little on the process of developing the main characters and how they came to the final result on screen? Did you have many different prototypes, how did you make them?

Zero and all of the characters are made from wire armatures set in silicone casts. We initially started with 10 cm and 15 cm tall prototypes but we were unable to obtain the desired range of movement. Our final characters were approximately 25 - 30cm tall. Once the puppets went through the armature, mold and casting production line, they were then passed onto Christine who put on her Fabrication hat and individually wrapped each one strand-by-strand with wool. This took 3 months full time to complete 27 characters which we then interchanged with 40+ heads and numbers.







As Zero was in every scene his armature often snapped (sometimes mid shot) thus he required multiple stunt doubles. In the end there were 6 Zeros created, where all the knots, criss crossed wool and coloured thread needed to be matched exactly.



Are there any future projects you can tell us about - stop motion or otherwise?

Zealous Creative have just completed post production on their latest stop motion animation, 'The Maker'. It's a story about a strange creature who races against time to create the most important and beautiful creation of his life. You can watch the trailer at http://vimeo.com/zealouscreative/themakertrailer. To see behind the scenes pics, keep up to date with news and screening info, visit facebook.com/themakerfilm.



We also have a number of projects in different stages of development including a feature stop motion animation and live action TV series.



MIAF Feature: Gravity - Darcy Prendergast

(Image Source: Provided by Darcy Prendergast)

Today we are talking to Darcy Prendergast about the music video clip 'Gravity' which he created for muscian Sam Buckingham.

Gravity will be screening at the Melbourne International Animation Festival on Saturday 25th June at 4:15pm as part of the Australian Showcase.

Can you tell us a little about Gravity and some of the concepts and theme’s within the video clip?

To coincide with the cute, simple track, I decided to run with an equally cute, simple concept. Nothing too challenging or visually confusing. Essentially its a love story involving two bright yellow blobs, who are initially frightened by a strong gravitational pull towards each other. Their vibrant nature sets them apart from the bleak, grey 9-5 landscape which they inhabit.

Can you tell us a little about what inspired the look of the music video? What made you decide to use stop motion animation instead of other animation techniques?

Stop motion has that beautiful, inherent tactile quality that just cant be replicated any other way. Its always my first choice, I heart it so so much. As far as the look goes, I wanted to again keep within the simple and cute parameters the song seemed to set. Its no use juxtaposing ridiculously demonic visuals with a song like that- it just doesn't work. I think as a music video clip director, you're obligated to heighten the track- hell, overshadow it if you can. You want the two artforms to converge and form something thats 10 fold more powerful than they would be on its own.

Could you talk a little on the process of developing the main characters and how they came to the final result on screen? Did you have many different prototypes, how did you make them?

I've adopted a pretty visceral approach to character design. I never draw or sculpt with a preconceived image in my head. I just begin, and adjust as I go. If something looks good, I keep it. If something looks crap, I change it. With such uncomplicated characters such as these blobs, its all in the expression and the posture, as you dont have much else to work with. Its boiled right down to its elementary form.

Are there any future projects you can tell us about - stop motion or otherwise?

Hells yes there are! Currently working on a new music video for Gotye, writing a live action TV series and I have a clay animated kids series in development with Nickelodeon, titled the Critter Litter. The other stop motion lads selected for MIAF are actually helping me out with it - incestuous old industry this one :)

MIAF Feature: Remembering Bonegilla - David Pennay

(Image source: All images provided by David Pennay)

Our MIAF feature today is with David Pennay talking about his film Remembering Bonegilla.

Remembering Bonegilla will be screening at the Melbourne International Animation Festival on Wednesday 22nd June at 8pm as part of the International Panorama Programs - Panorama #4: Australian.

Can you tell us a little about the story of Remembering Bonegilla and some of the concepts and themes within the film?

Remembering Bonegilla was created to look at life in the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre through the eyes of three different fictional characters 'The Colonel', 'Mara' and 'Joe' each highlighting a different perspective of how life was to them at Bonegilla. The animation was to be used as an educational tool to be shown on site at "Block 19” at The Bonegilla Migrant Experience (museum) .

Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre was the first Australian home for more than 300,000 migrants from over 50 countries. Today the centre touches the lives of millions of Australian's and stands as strong testimony to the courage and resilience of all post war migrants.

I tried to give a small taste of the variety of experiences that some of the migrants experienced including themes such as the carefree life of a child to the protests of the jobless Migrants.

Initially I was not going to enter this animation into MIAF as it is part of the onsite educational experience that was not made to be a stand alone short film, but i thought that most people would get the gist anyhow.

Can you tell us a little about what inspired the look of the film? What made you decide to use stop motion animation instead of other animation techniques?

The look of the film had to reflect the lives of the 3 characters and what Bonegilla would have been like when it operated between 1947-71. So I went and visited the site and looked through the old corrugated huts that they used to live in to help me visualise and be able to create a real sense of the camp.

Stop motion is one of my favourite forms of animation, and when my clients said I could have free range in the artistic sense (as long as it suited their target audience) I jumped on the chance to shoot in stop motion, I really love getting my hands dirty and building sets and sculpting characters, it gets you away from the computer and you really feel like you are making something tactile, a small world that you become immersed in.

Could you talk a little on the process of developing the main characters and how they came to the final result on screen. Did you have many different prototypes? How did you make them?

With the characters I had rough sketches of each of how I envisaged them being. I tried to reflect their roles and personality as I was given a fair bit of background history about each characters mixture, and just went from there doing research and then sketching again. I did a few rough practice sculpts then began to build the characters with a wire armature inside.

As sculpting is very tactile i try to let the characters come out of the clay with the drawing just as a guide. I had to make mouth sets for the characters and played around with two different techniques, with the Colonel I used a replacement mouth set that i made where his whole jaw comes out, whereas with Joe I just had small mouths that attach to his face which is a lot easier, as there was a lot of lip synching.

The capturing of the right voice for each character was curicial as it helps the characters come to life, and I was lucky enough to actually use the voice of one of the original migrants, he had some amazing stories to tell, whilst I was recording.

With my sets I used as much recycled and reused materials as I could, collecting heaps of old cardboard boxes to help make the corrugation walls and roofs of the huts.

Are there any future projects you can tell us about - stop motion or otherwise?

At the moment I have a couple of stop motion projects up my sleeves but they are still at the scripting stage, I am also currently working in conjunction with Croydon Hills Primary School as part of Arts Victoria, Artist in Schools Program, Helping grade 5 students create 3 separate stop motion animations. I also run after school animation classes at FCAC, my free lance work and also some collaborative projects which all keeps me very busy.

Remembering Bonegilla can be viewed on site at the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre (north east victoria 12km of Albury Wodonga) or their website.

MIAF Feature: Blown Away - Seamus Spilsbury

(image source: all images seen in this interview were provided by Seamus Spilsbury)

Today's MIAF feature is with Seamus Spilsbury talking about his film Blown Away.

Blown Away will be screening at the Melbourne International Animation Festival on Wednesday 22nd June at 8pm as part of the International Panorama Programs - Panorama #4: Australian.

Can you tell us a little bit about the story of Blown Away and some of the concepts and themes within the film?

The film is about a clown who shares an unexpected moment with a small boy that helps him deal with the loss of his brother.

When the concept of the film first came about, I had strong ideas that I wanted to create a subtle moment between two characters. I didn’t want to have a grand ending, but just to offer the audience hope for my character in the future.

I wanted to represent the innocence of a child in the sense that regardless of how the clown may appear to an adult, the boy sees the clown as an entertainer and is there to make people laugh. When the balloon pops the boy experiences a moment in which reality becomes clearer, in this instance the boy looks past the clown's exterior, and sees an opportunity to help.

Can you tell us a little about what inspired the look of the film? What made you decide to use stop motion animation instead of other animation techniques?

The look of the film developed over time. I had an idea in my head to begin with but in terms of the final results it was an organic process. To begin with I thought that the film should have a cold tone with lots of blue shades to reflect the clowns feelings of loss and isolation. After trialling this colour scheme I thought using a warmer palette would further demonstrate the clowns loneliness and create a more meaningful contrast between the clown and the environment for the audience.

I chose to use stop motion because it is the medium that I know and that I love. From start to finish you are creating with your hands, you are physically involved with making the film. I am not a fan of using visual effects or computer animation. Stop motion allows me to shoot everything in camera, although it may not be photo realistic it lends a certain charm that can only be created by hand.

Could you talk a little on the process of developing the main characters and how they came to the final result on screen. Did you have many different prototypes? How did you make them?

The clown design ended up being based on the first drawing I did. A few minor changes were made in terms of clothing but the over all look remained the same. The boy was slightly harder, mainly because I wasn’t sure how old I wanted him to be. I ended up basing him on my 7 year old nephew. After this decision was made the design process was easier, it was great for animation also, it provided a real life reference on how the character would move and interact with the clown.

The clown was built to be stationary, only his top half could be animated. His pants and hands were made from Sculpy because they did not have to be animated. His torso was made from plasticine in order to animate small arm movements, breathing and slouching.

The boy’s armature was technically more difficult because he had to be able to run, jump and crouch. For the boys armature I used K&S tubing as pivot points for his hips and shoulders. I wanted to be able to replace a limb in the likely event that the wire broke due to the intensity of the animation. This process allowed me to rebuild the small sections of the boy’s armature instead of having to re-sculpt the entire character.

Are there any future projects you can tell us about stop motion or otherwise?

I’ve just started production on my third year film, which is also stop motion. I’m also working with Darcy Prendergast and the Oh Yeah Wow crew creating a variety of amazing pieces of work. So stay tuned.

And on that note I might just add at the end here that we will be talking to Darcy on Thursday about his film Gravity!