I’ve had the chance to be a professional artist for 10+ years, and animation has brought me most of what is good in my life.

After so long spent on the same task, I’ve become – for lack of a better word – an expert. Expertise is wonderful because it allows me to express what I want with a certain degree of confidence and ease, and – not negligibly – allows me to go home early most of the time. The flip side of expertise is that it slowly, imperceptibly shrinks the scope of possibilities as I gradually became more of a craftsman and less of an artist.

A lot of the ideas I would have had before – and probably would have failed at – I dismiss today because experience tells me it’s not worth the trouble – I know it’s not gonna work, so why bother?

Except… Isn’t that what expressing oneself is all about? Taking risks, trying new things, being silly, failing?

All that had gone from my life, and I needed to recapture it. I started to work on ‘Violince’ an animated comic book, and it worked wonders at first. I was challenged again, I made mistakes, I learned – but after two years even that had become routine. I know how to do it and I simply execute.

That’s where the ‘short-shorts’ come in.

A new subject, a new style, a new challenge every couple of months, and maybe trying things that are silly or look impossible, or just try to make something pretty.

‘Madeleine’ is the first of this series.

A silly thing happened to my wife – that she told me in the funny way only she knows how – and I figured there was an animation idea there.

Two evenings later I had made a short animatic (story-board), and the response to it was so good that I felt confident to move on to the next stage. I had a very specific image in mind of what I wanted to achieve and struggled, and struggled, and struggled again, until I finally decided to do the smart thing and asked for advice.

It led me quite simply to try actual watercolors, on actual paper – an almost abstract notion in this digital age.

From the first sketch I knew I was on the right path, and after a few more efforts, I had something that I was happy with.

The experimentation was supposed to stop there, but then I was further intrigued by watercolor, and started wondering how I could harness the light and unpredictability of it for the characters as well, while still delivering a finished and polished piece of work.

I experimented with a few techniques, eventually settling on what I feel is still a bit of a compromise, but perfecting the technique – if I’m inclined to do so – will have to wait for another ‘short-short’.

Next in line are silly jokes, an office prank and animating zero G, all in a variety of techniques such as good old pencils, gouache, or maybe even messing around with the sacrosanct 24 frames per second.

Anything is game as long as it keeps me out of my comfort zone!

To see more of Nic’s animations and connect with him, visit:

Twitter: @niledog

Website: www.niledog.com

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W: What was the inspiration behind “You Could Sunbathe in this Storm” (YCSITS)?

AD: YCSITS came about when I was experimenting with animation as an art form in the final year of my MA at the Royal College of Art. When making work for others, there is usually a certain way of doing things: you come up with the idea, you make an animatic, you make some changes that the client requests, you figure out how to make the film and then you make it. However, with this piece, I wanted to make a film that was lead by the making process and inspired by everyday feelings that evolved with each new day. I began by setting myself the challenge to shoot about 10 seconds of footage everyday, record some audio (conversations/news clips/interesting sounds), free-write, research, sketch and make props. I studied lots of philosophy and anthropology and had a lot of conversations with my fellow RCA students about the projects they were working on. As the process went on, I began to work with musicians as well – so the sound and music was created in the same way and not left to the end. It is a film that I hope encourages the viewer to contemplate the bigger picture.

W: What filming techniques did you use to film the short?

AD: A combination of stop motion animation, time lapse photography, and live action footage composited together with After Effects.

W: What was the script writing process like?

AD: I did a lot of free-writing and then selected sections to include in the film. It was much more word heavy in earlier versions. I also used a section of ‘The old men admiring themselves in the water’ by W.B. Yeates.

W: How much prep time was required for this short? How many plaster pieces did you end up making?

AD: This was made over about 8 months, but the first four months were spent mulling over ideas for other films and experimenting with materials, so its hard to say really. Oh and I made hundreds of plaster shapes!

W: At about 3:00 it looks like growths start forming on the pyramids – was that CG or did you create models for every single phase of growth?

AD: They are not CG, they are real crystals growing out of the plaster shapes. I would dye the shapes with ink and then sit them in a special solution of chemicals that would absorb into the plaster and grow crystals out of the shapes over a period of about 24 hours. I would capture the growth using time lapse photography. It was a little tricky trying to position the camera and lighting on something that didn’t exist at the start of the shoot, but luckily it managed to work most of the time.

W: Your music video “Where to Go” has a similar look and feel. Do you feel like this defines your style?

AD: Perhaps. I think I am still developing my style, but I am certainly very interested in the use of chemicals and other concoctions to create organic looking movement that suggests life without being alive.

W: Did you go through the same creation process with “Where to Go” as you did with “You Could Sunbathe in this Storm?”

AD: No, ‘Where To Go’ is a music video, so the music inspired the idea. I co-directed it with Annlin Chao, and it had a lot more structure and planning to it as we had a production company (Blink), musician (Chris Morphitis) and Record label (Village Green) to please. However, a lot of the experiments and processes we used to make it inspired a lot of YCSITS.

W: Are you working on any projects right now?

AD: Yes, I am in the process of making a music video for Tom Rosenthal.

Connect with Alice and see more of her work here:

Website: www.alicedunseath.com

Twitter: @AliceDunseath

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The post Stop Motion, Time Lapse, and Live Action: Alice Dunseath appeared first on Wispeo.