Getting Personal - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 81

RH - My fi rst proper animation was on my foundation course, which was a drawn piece of someone
painting a wall. It was actually pleasing. Studying the basic exercises followed this.
JC - At college. I tried to animate oil paints on glass unsuccessfully. The fi rst problem being I was not
good with oils, add to that my ambitious idea to trace the journey of a goldfi sh, fl ushed down the toilet,
through the sewers and fi nally into the ocean. I attempted a drawn animation based on the painting
The Raft of the Medusa . It involved one of the occupants sucking up the others like spaghetti. This too was
a disappointment. Both projects were too ambitious for my level of skill.
FL - I'm actually in the starting now. But yes, I am doing all the basic exercises: walk exercises, weight,
and ease-in-ease-out, etcetera. I'm trying to learn animation principles before making a full fi lm. I've
started many things in life thinking that I should make a masterpiece without even knowing the basic
things. I've learnt it doesn't work that way. So I'm sure that I'm learning to learn.
DS - Pete was the main animator and I don't think we ever did things like walk cycles before we started.
We didn't have any formal training and apart from reading a few topics which were rather technical,
there was nothing which said we should start doing fi ve-fi nger exercises before we played Beethoven, so
to speak.
We had to wait several days for the rushes. On seeing them, the timing was i ne, but I had
done something stupid, and had kept doing it. There was Grandma happily putting her toes
down i rst, giving her an odd walk indeed. I took myself away into a corner and felt how
I walked, feeling exactly what the feet are doing and why they are doing it. A hugely important
lesson to learn at the beginning: in a casual walk, the heel always goes down i rst. Of course
there are comedy moments and tip-toeing that need the toes to come down i rst, but it does
look odd otherwise. I have never been one for looking in a mirror or videoing myself, preferring
to act it internally, literally feeling the weight and positioning of the limbs. But I had animated
a puppet, almost got away with it, and it was a glorious experience. I had given some
semblance of life to a character, and she was acting. I was on a high, and the world, for me
at least, changed.
What did it feel like when you fi rst moved a puppet? Did the rushes elate
you or disappoint you?
JD - Since my early puppets were so crude, there wasn't much elation during the animation process.
When I saw the fi lm and the darn things moved, then I was elated!
TB - My fi rst stop motion was animating a Johnny West horse, which had a moveable neck. I shot on a
sunny summer day on my parent's front porch. I was fi fteen. The horse's head could move up and down
and from side to side. I didn't have a projector, so I ran over to my aunt's house and together we saw my
fi rst animation. All I can say is that when the horse moved, I felt elated and simply overwhelmed with
pleasure. An emotional orgasm, if you will. It thrilled my aunt and me, and I watched it about nine or ten
times. I didn't think about the performance, because I was thinking more about the technique of moving
single frame, though my fi rst camera didn't have a single frame release, so I'd click the trigger and hope
that I'd get only one frame, but sometimes I'd get three or four frames. Later, when more comfortable