As you may recall I spent much of last summer creating a Silhouette Stop Motion Animation as part of my artist residency at Halsway Manor. Luckily, the final film was seen by the Somerset Heritage Trust who then commissioned me to create a film for them to support their exhibition 'The Art of The Potter' with the focus being upon the lives of the Donyatt Potters.

There is a blog post on the South West Heritage Trust website which explains the process in some depth and I hope you will take a look at it to see a little more about the project. However, the film itself focuses upon the last pottery in Donyatt, Pit Potter, which was run by the Arlidge brothers.

The commission has been a real treat for me as it has seen me move into vertical 4K film making which has been an enormous challenge. However, the greatest compliment (and terror) has come from the sheer size of the screens that the film is being shown on. If you look a the image below you can see a shot of the animation with the doorway to the pottery exhibition included to give you an idea of scale.

I have finally gotten around to publishing part of the finished Memory Archive on Vimeo and thought I would share it with you. So here is Penstowe Manor,  a country house in Cornwall, which is now a  holiday park

I am very excited to tell you that I have been selected as one of the candidates for the Somerset Art Works Emerging Artist Bursary. 
I  will be developing an animation  in response to the theme  'The Levels and Moors'  and am 
I am now starting my research so will be collecting stories and experiences from members of the public in the area and I will be posting updates on my blog and on the Levels and Moors website.
If you want to find out more or look at the other Artists taking part click here and don't forget to take a look at the link to my work by clicking here

I often tell people that I am in my 'cave' animating but it occurred to me that this probably doesn't mean a lot to anyone else. So I thought I would add a couple of images to show you what the cave looks like.
I am largely self taught when it comes to stop motion animating, although recently I have been very lucky to receive help from the Animation Department at Uni.   
You may notice from the images that I am not exactly state of the art  but I will pass on a little knowledge every now and then to help new animators. Those of you who know what your talking about please look away now!

My animation set up comprises of 3 light sources (two desk lights, and the camera), the drawing is registered to a peg bar flat on the desk (this eliminates movement in the film). My DSLR camera is suspended in a fixed position over the drawing. 

Unfortunately iStopmotion, which is a low cost animation package does not give live previews with my canon so next to the camera is a webcam which allows me to see what I am shooting and lets me do lots of other great things like onion skinning, rotoscoping etc. and is previewed on my mac which you can see on the left of the image.

All light has been removed from the room, which makes it cold and dark but  stops flickering in the animation. 

I will post more about this set up later!

I am looking at the next section of my animation which will  involve  the narrators hands moving whilst sharing memories with the viewer. I think there should be a social element involved so I have undertaken a study of hands playing cards. The images are fairly dark but once run though the animation they should look better.