Reflective Encounters 2022 - Late Lounge: Squishy Random Body Parts

 For the last couple of years, Encounters Film Festival in Bristol has started a new initiative to include a series of reflective contextual reviews of their films written by a range of writers to give the audience a further and hopefully a fuller understanding of the films they are seeing. Below are the ones I wrote for one of their late lounge screenings (always one of my favourite events every year) entitled Squishy Random Body Parts you can see the rest of the catalogue here.

Short film update for boris noris

Well Boris and Noris are getting around a bit recently and i was actually able to attend a screening last weekend at the brilliant Cardiff International Film Festival where my film played during the two cloth cat family screening early on Saturday morning. 

Way back in the March it played at my first American festival! at the 'Open World animation Festival' in AllanTown,PA and again on more local turf at Blackpool at the 'Flyn Film Festival'. Then in April it was up in Manchester at the Creative Indutries Trafford. Then between the 18th-21st of this month (May) you can see the film in France at 7 petits caillouxe- where you can also see the storyboards of rte film being exhibited as an added bonus! and if you still haven't seen it yet and happen to be based in the Kudlov, Czech Republic you can catch them there at the Zlin film Festival. 

Our Yarden banner design

My good friend Amy Willet commissioned me recently to create a banner for her new blog called "our yarden" she wanted a collection of simply hand drawn/graphic plants and gardening equipment in a repeated pattern.

initial thumbnail sketch

limited colour guide

Final banner design 

in use on website, instagram and Facebook

Finished filming

I finished filming just before christmas on my new film Boris-Noris, it's now just in the long slog of rig re-movel, sound, music and edit. I've had a separate blog up about the process of making the film here, if you fancy a look. It's been hard year getting this up to scratch but i'm pretty happy with how it's all coming together.

Taking the last shot on Boris-Noris

Weird Eye and Horace the Horseshoe bat

Over the summer I invited two other girls form my Masters Course to go out for ice cream-yes seriously were that twee. With a proposition I wanted us to start a collective. I wanted to create a collective for many reasons.

For one myself and Fiona Viani-Pericci (Director and fellow fonder of Weird Eye) had discussed the possibility of making more dependent films after the Mastered had finished and wanted to work together with Hannah Stevens ( Concept artist and other founding member of Weird Eye). We wanted to centre these films around the trope of Bad Luck omens as we had some ideas already for films and felt there was enough within this loose theme to collectively bring together a series of short films.

Also for myself I wanted a guise to work under for freelance commercial work, 2D/After Effects animation and production skills.

I also new that both Fiona and Hannah although very talented and perfectly capable may benefit from my own knowledge in contract/invoicing and general negations when it came to clients.

As we started to pick out ideas for names, luck would have it that a contract would fall into our newly formed inbox. A short piece for the for Clarkson & Woods Ltd.in association with Bath city council. To raise awareness about the local Horseshoe bat population. Seemingly a good fit for our collective skill set we worked together over several months to create the below piece of work.

Further images and break down for the work can be found on my colleagues websites and blogs. I created the schduals contracts and produced the film whilst also animating, rigging and creating cycles for the film. It was a relatively simple project which is now being shown in schools as part of an educational pack -in which we created a beat board styled comic to go along, to educate children about bats and their habitats around Bath.

In terms of the collective name and design we were originally going to be called The Bad Luck Collective but after some consumer feedback it was decided that this was to negative and went with instead Weird Eye Collective - communicating hopefully that we have a unique eye for deign and motion. Were currently working on ideas for our first film Directed by Fiona called  Wick as well as working on our second commission due to be finished by next summer.

Morph

I also was able to do a little work on Morph whats I was at Aardman too which was amazing and also lead to my first credits on an Aardman project! 

Sorry for the low quilty photos- I haven't managed to get a link to take actually screen grabs yet. 

Working at Aardman -DFS winter commercial

Over the summer I was able to secure a month of work at the world renowned (And on my door step luckily) Aardman animation studio. I worked in the puppet department asa junior animator helping fabricate the hair, hands, heads, shoes and facial features for some of the puppets. 

Child soldier-BBC world Service

Around March time I along with my fellow Ma student were approached to create a series of short animations based on audio interviews conducted by the BBC worldwide service. We were given the subject at random (with a little swapping going on between individuals) and were given a minute extract form a much longer interview.

I was given the diffiuclt but rewarding challenge to visualise part of Deng Adut's story, Deng is currently a Lawyer based in Australia, however he was taken form his home country where he had been taken form his mother and sibling and made to serve as a child solider. He was tourchered, beaten and extremely ill after living in awful conditions. Although it isn't mentioned in the audio clip Dengs brother actually managed to save him and get himself and Deng out of the country, he also told Deng to become a lawyer to help in gain a voice for children like himself. There is a nod his brother within the animation as he was clearly an important figure in Deng's past his brother returned to sudan to help other children escape and was unfortunately killed).

I worked with connect artist Carwyn David, as i felt his style would best suite the idea i had for the film.//vimeo.com/182285521



You can also see the animation and the addition articles on the BBC World Service page here.

My new film BORIS-NORIS has its own Blog.

My new film is to hip for blogger, it really isn't, I will probably default back to this blog after it all down but for now i'm keeping it pretty up to date over on the old Film fount, join in the fun over here.

TV Licensing "Evicted"

So last term I worked on a live brief with my college Fiona V-P for the youtube channel RED BEE for TV licensing. We were given a list of genuine excuses from the local area (BRISTOL) and asked to animate around it. I chose "I don't need a TV licence as i'm being evicted, for stabbing a guy in the head, but I don't know why i'm being evicted cos it happened three streets over".

the whole idea was centred around this character that I came up with and thought he'd be fun to animate. The quick sketch I did before the one above made my fellow animator think he'd be a different colour so she created the swatch below.

Colour tests by Fiona V-P

Final Design and Mouth Shapes

Storyboard

Final Edit.

Our film got censored in the end, originally there was a pull of blood coming form the stabbing scene, which got edited out. For the greater good?

Three little words

One of the first projects we were set this term was to gather into groups, pick two words at random from an envelope and a third emotion from a sport envelope and make a short film collaboratively. The films we were given were OPERA, ROAR and our emotion was ARROGANCE/SNOOTINESS. We were then given style guides, which we were abel to swap out if we wanted, we received UPA which was fantastic for me as it's something i'm very familiar with and love. It was suggested as myself and another girl in our group are 'The stop-motioners' of our year that we should attempt stop-motion for this project. This was great as I've wanted to combine my love of stop-mo and UPA for a long time.

The result of this exercise and six weeks, of making, planning, animating and tireless editing on behalf of our Director/Editor Ben Sullivan. Is as seen below ( I can't show you the full film at this time as were hoping to submit it for festivals this summer).

Initial sculpts

Setting up/testing

 

multiple ladys for shots

me animting

Production schedule - ready!

Lady in the spotlight

i'm back...sorry

It's been a long time since i've done anything with this blog, again. sorry about that. I've now started a MA in Animation at the University of West England (Bristol) in fact i'm just about to finish my first term (of three). eep. It's been one hell of a trip getting here, I applied to both UWE and The NFTS ( however that was for Producing) and al though the experience was a greta, I learnt a lot about Pitching which was exciting, it was generally decided i wasn't the best fit for the course. I am very happy to be in Bristol however, the course if amazing, my peers equal so, lectures smashing and Bristol it has to be said feels very much like home.

Another massive thing that happened in conjunction with getting on my Masters degree was that i also managed to swing a BAFTA scholarship, which is a little insane. You can read about it here. It was truly such a great honour and to be honest surprise to not only be considered but awarded the funding for the full cost of my Masters which is huge wait off, I can tell you.

Me and my fellow recipients at the Bafta drinks party!

Like so many of the best and most exciting things that have happened to me in the last 5 years have come though not only hard work but actually just sitting down and applying for things with a kind of f**k it why not attitude.

I'll try and update things from this term soon, maybe over christmas, it'll be nice to get back into the blog again, regardless of how little attention and how easily I forget to update it...Ever.

New Prints

After looking for ages for prints for my new office and my mums kitchen, I decided to create my own vintage inspired object prints, as nothing I found online was quite right. 

It was also a great opportunity to try my hand at Illustrator, which I love. However I did revert back to photoshop for the texturing/gradients and scaling for print 

Office:

Kitchen: