1. the state of being full of life or vigour; liveliness.
2. the technique of photographing successive drawings or positions of puppets or models to create an illusion of movement when the film is shown as a sequence.”a combination of live action with 3-D animation”
Due to circumstances documented elsewhere on this website it had escaped my notice that the short film The Somme In Seven Poems had become available on Vimeo.
These animations were produced by BDH to illustrate and accompany the poetry featured in the BBC’s 90 minute documentary War of Words: Soldier Poets of the Somme, which aired last November on BBC2.
This compilation was put together as a teaser for the full length documentary and released on the iPlayer the weekend of Rememberance Day.
Making these animations was a very humbling privilege, and a hefty responsibility, and we hope they are a fitting tribute to the people who saw and experienced things thankfully most of us only have to imagine.
A great big thanks to Hugh Cowling and Libby Redden who contributed so much to the finished work.
National Geographic have uploaded an image gallery from one of the dinosaur shows we worked on. Some of the compositions on the stills they have chosen are a bit unusual, and they seem to have upload everything twice, but they still look marvellous to me.
“We need to re-train audiences who’ve grown used to the free YouTube model that shorts are worth paying for. I keep telling my animator friends, “Please sell your work. Even if you put it online and just charge 50 cents, sell it.” “Everything is free” has been doing genuine damage to young artists.” (animation)
This was for the War of Words VR app that was made by the team at BDH from the some of the animations we made for the War Of Words: Soldier Poets of the Somme documentary I have talked about extensively here.
As far as I know the App is still available on iTunes and the Play store.
This also reminds me that we picked up two West of England RTS awards recently (during my “blog break”). One for Best Graphics for War of Words and the other for Best Short Animation for The Somme In Seven Poems. It was quite an evening as I wasn’t really sure we’d win anything, let alone two, and beating such greats as Arthur Cox and Aardman Animations.
So I had to do two speeches, which was interesting for everyone I think. Hopefully I kept it short and mumbly, because I actually remember nothing about being on stage except a sea of expectant faces and the overwhelming urge to run.
Here’s some pictures of us collecting and yes that’s me at the mic:
Quite an evening. Felt very lucky and blessed that what we worked so hard on was recognised in such a way.
We totally won 2 @RTS_Bristol awards for #WarOfWords and #SevenPoems. Amazing times. Very humbled. (at Bristol Old Vic) https://instagram.com/p/z_BZNfHy3V/
That’s the end of the trumpets.
In other news I have fired up the old Facebook page to stream sketches and the like, because, even though I am a grown up I still have a problem zapping art in front of people who have friended me there, so it’s a separate place for that. Please follow along if you like Facebook.
I’m also trying to restart the daily sketching project, now the dust has settled, but it’s less “daily” more “regular”, I’m still keeping the 365 count as I would like to have some closure on that. They go on Instagram then get sent everywhere else. So probably best not follow me in more than one place because you’ll get repeats and no-one deserves that.
Copying the final few CGI render frames of a prehistorically massive project which has been keeping us extremely occupied for the last few months. I’m very tired and may spend some time sleeping very soon. https://instagram.com/p/2jOzTMHy-1/
There is a interesting confluence that occurs in the brain when it’s been focused on a project so singularly and for such a long period of time, and then that project ends. After a space of quiet all the thoughts you didn’t have for the intervening months suddenly crash in from all angles. It’s a very fruitful and provides great perspective, but can be over very quickly.
I’ll will post something about the job in question when it gets released, but for now I would just say We had the good fortune to work with animator Rosie Ashforth who turned around several of the miracles we performed to get the job done on time.
So I’ve had a couple of days off to recover, and to remember what the outside looks like.
There’s a lot of catching up to do here as I missed out so much time but that will come. As the country recovers from a pretty dark election result and a new compassion less Britain, and summer struggles to get itself into gear. But there’s no need to mourn.
I wanted to write some stuff about this programme sooner, but the events previously documented in this blog (which all began on the afternoon of broadcast) meant it’s taken me some time to take stock and collect all the things that happened as a result of the show going out.
As I have mentioned before, “War of Words: The Soldier Poets of the Somme” was a 90 minute BBC Arts documentary, directed by Sebastian Barfield that sought to reconnect the history and the landscape of the notorious 1916 Battle of the Somme with the extraordinary poetry and literature that it inspired. At BDH we created content graphics to help illustrate the history and also animations (which I was involved with) to accompany the poetry. We had a great team on the job, and working on it was a moving and wonderful experience.
This post is partly a scrapbook for my purposes to collect some of the information, posts and reactions that went out on social media, in a Storify style, so I might be updating it as and when I come across more of them. Also be warned, this post is mostly embeds from Twitter, so if you are reading this on anything else that the actual webpage they might format weirdly.
You can see a clip from the show via the BBC here, this part concerns the removal of lice eggs from clothing and Isaac Rosenberg’s Louse Hunting.
There was a preview screening of the programme at the Watershed on the 5th November. Afterwards Peter Barton, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Sebastian Barfield, Jeremy Banning and Richard Van Emden discussed the programme, the poets and how they shaped the way people remember the Great War. That discussion is available to hear on Soundcloud here:(direct link).
Sebastien Barfield wrote some words on the BBC blog about the show.
This is a link to a discussion of the programme on Military History Online, quite fascinating in itself.
“The Somme In Seven Poems” was a short that BDH produced which anthologised just the poetry animations themselves. That went onto the iPlayer a week before the broadcast, and got some lovely responses from people, especially on Remembrance Day.
Here is a trailer BDH produced for the short.
Obviously in the modern age, people can watch the show at anytime once it goes on the iPlayer so these tweets are not really in chronological order. I just went through the hashtags and search options retrospectively and grabbed some of the most interesting ones.
The whole programme has been taken down from the iPlayer now but I have heard bits are on YouTube somewhere, you’ll have to search for that yourself, if you feel so inclined.
BDH have produce a VR app that contains the animation for The Kiss one of the poems featured on the show. This works on Google Cardboard and is available on Google Play and iTunes.
Ah, January, with your sobriety and need for useful activity. I suppose we better do you.
I have a list of overlong posts to make, I got backed up a little with various things happening towards the end of the year, I’ll make it easy for myself by starting with a Round Up Of Things type post.
WolfandFox posted this clip from Judex. We got shown this film at art college and it had a profound effect on me. This sequence stood apart somewhat, it’s like film from another planet, doesn’t try to explain itself too much. I like that.
This clip from Paul Mason, an off the cuff rant on his frustration with another banking corruption story, from someone who follows world finance as closely as he does. It won’t stop happening, despite what they say.
I spent a bit of time in South Shields during November. It’s a lovely place.
Social media offer a single profile for our singular identity, but our consciousness comprises multiple forms of identity simultaneously: We are at once a unique bundle of sense impressions and memories, and a social individual imbued with a collectively constructed sense of value and possibility. Things like Facebook give the impression that these different, contestable and often contradictory identities (and their different contexts) can be conveniently flattened out, with users suddenly having more control and autonomy in their piloting through everyday life. That is not only what for-profit companies like Facebook want, but it is also what will feel natural to subjects already accustomed to capitalist values of convenience, capitalist imperatives for efficiency, and so on.
The magnificent Billie Whitelaw past away, Samuel Becket’s Perfect Actress. How can you not watch this and be transported to another place. (#FilmFromAnotherPlanet)
Bill Kartalopoulos wrote a great piece on why comics are more important now than ever, in which he refers to Professor Maryanne Wolf‘s idea of the bi-literate brain. It includes an interesting breakdown of this classic page by Windsor McCay.
via Huff Post
“Robert Frost famously described poetry as the thing that gets lost in translation. It’s not hard to imagine the story of Little Nemo’s galloping bed adapted into full blazing CGI, and certainly much would be added. Digital texture artists would show us what kind of wood Nemo’s bed is made from (oak? teak? cherry wood?); the wind would ruffle convincingly through Nemo’s hair as his face registered every gradation of delight and terror (the recent cgi Peanuts trailer suggests some possibilities). But what would be lost in this translation from one form to another would be the poetics of comics: the aesthetic experience of simultaneously experiencing a comic’s form and content so harmoniously that the contours of the comic’s theme can be read in its architectural blueprint.” (via)
Matt Fraction wrote this about why he is easing off Twitter. It’s a sobering read. Encourages me to want to post on here more.
I have been keeping a Winter 2014 playlist. It’s already quite long as I feel I have been catching up with autumn. (There’s a more comprehensive version on Whyd, but that doesn’t seem to embed here.)
All thru the gateway now, yes? Happy New Year, Planet Earth! Arbitrary time for restarts but goodness knows a few of us could do with one. x
Adam Curtis made this chilling short film for Charlie Brooker’s round up of last year. It definitely should’ve gone out instead of the Christmas speech.
Not sure how the embeds are coming across in different reading applications, but to be honest I don’t really have that many readers that it matters. If it does, and you’re missing stuff let me know.
Paul Greer 