Thursday 23 August 2012

Chica Chica Boom Chic!!

                                                    " Bananas are my business"

I am covered in glitter and glue, but I'm very pleased to present , Miss Carmen Miranda .........










Wednesday 22 August 2012

Carmen Miranda doll

It is no secret that I am a fan of the outrageously eccentric and an even bigger fan of accessories and hats! So with this in mind and my penchant for doll making I have decided that,,, the long awaited Carmen Miranda doll is now on my list of projects. I actually had this idea a long time ago and made all the individual bits of fruit about a year ago, unfortunately I was side tracked with larger projects, but now that i find myself with a little more time, this beautifully extravagant take on a 'kokeshi' style doll will soon me available for you to love!

Sunday 12 August 2012

Don't call!

I wrote this song last night, I've been listening to a lot of my early cure records lately, things like 'Three imaginary boys' etc,, and I just love the upbeat almost post punk sound. I say post punk as I don;t really class the sound as been in the midst of punk, anyway, I thought, why not try recreate that sound and feel of the early cure records , and this is what I came up with.

Saturday 11 August 2012

Green eyed monster

I wrote this song last month but haven't had the change to record it. I plan to make an animated video to accompany it at some point

Animation explanation

 OK, I've now recovered from my one woman animation extravaganza. I enjoyed every minute of it though and have been reading up on animation all summer and hoping to improve my skills.
I hope that every one has been enjoying both my map of the future and my Dancing with myself  animations, I'm certainly very proud of both of them. I think perhaps I'm more proud of the fact that working this way is a very time consuming venture, which would be a lot easier if i had a whole team of people to help, however I do not have this and so every bit of these films has been done by me , and me alone. When I see the finished product created by all my time and hard work, I feel extremely proud indeed.

In the map of the future I wanted to portray the idea of a map in a very different way, I didn't want to do a traditional map and as I wanted to develop my animation skills and continue with narrative ideas, I thought that an animated story of a map would be the perfect idea for me to pursue.
     I chose the map of the future as I found it a very interesting option, mainly because no one knows what will happen in the future , so the idea of a map of the future wasn't rigid and left me free to create a narrative of my own. I wanted to create an internal narrative for myself( the knitted doll of myself) in which I portrayed my thoughts about the things I was feeling and thinking about the past and moving on into the future. I've always been a big fan of metaphors and so used a lot of them within this animation IE; witches spoiling the day, and weeds obscuring beautiful gardens etc,,

I used the Robert smith doll to symbolise all the good things from the past and to show that not everything should be repressed or forgotten, good things and nice memories should always stay with you and remain part of you, past present and future.

I also wanted to represent the omnipresence of 'bad people' because no matter what you do or where you go, there will always be people who try to ruin you ,, the wicked witches Frank L Balm wrote of and the weeds ready to over grow the rose gardens. I though this a very poetic way to describe such people, a beautiful way of describing such ugliness. Because as much as we all may like to believe things will one day be perfect and peachy, these people will always be around the corner wherever you go.

The main point of my film was to say that the future is a blank canvas, you have to draw your own , and you must never use the maps ( symbolic of other peoples opinions) to guide you though, everything has to be your own. You have to deal with the horrible witches and weeds and continue to draw and make yourself and your own future.

Wednesday 8 August 2012

Map of the future animation

It's about 2 30 am and I am very tired indeed , but I have finally finished my map of the future! I shall write more about it tomorrow as I am falling asleep, but I hope it was worth the wait , I certainly think it is.

Sunday 5 August 2012

(Chris Hopewell) Radioheads there there music video

I don't know why i didn't think to put this video on my blog before, When the song first came out the video reminded me of 'The Wind in the Willows' but now that I'm older and have discovered the Victorian taxidermy art of Walter Potter I realise that this was the inspiration for the film. Whenever I watch this video it makes me feel like a child again, it's magical, and it's the kind of world I wish existed, but with this in mind it is something I really aspire to. For a start I want to perhaps develop my characters from the darkest forest into something more real like the Walter potter images (although I won't be using dead animals) I feel this unique mixture of stop motion magic and real life brings a beautiful element of dark enchantment to work like this and as I say it is something I really aspire to.

Saturday 4 August 2012

sorry for the delay

For anyone who  follows my work I feel I must apologise for the delay in my future map animation. I find myself in a complete quagmire of confusion and frustration. I recently received the gift of a 'state of the art' computer program that , if you are computer literate and understand computer jargon and technical computer type things, would admittedly allow me to make amazing videos and animations. However I do not understand these things and it seems no one else around me does either , leaving me me in the before mentioned quagmire. I have sat for days watching tutorials and reading up on this program , and still can not work out what I need to. This is why my animation is not finished . I have all the images I need and I have the story, but must admit I'm finding it overly frustrating that the only thing I need now , is something i fear I shall never understand. I have read and read , and watched and watched , but still I don't understand how to change the timing and add audio etc,, I'm so frustrated I could in fact cry. I feel like giving up on it ,, but I refuse to do this so shall continue to frustrate myself further, until by some miracle I understand. If I do not however I'm afraid I shall have to just put it all together on my old program and have it less perfect than I imagined it would be. I'm sorry if anyone was looking forward to it, but I shall at least have something soon , even if i have to revert back to another less perfect program.