Using the Body - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 245

and the puppet's materials can move a limb back a fraction after it has been repositioned, and
in small moves this can result in a judder. You take a risk in a lengthy sequence of small moves
that the slightest inconsistency becomes very obvious. It takes absolute control. Glitches show
up all too easily, whereas in big moves, you can get away with a certain roughness; but there's
something very beautiful about a long, slow move.
One of the most subtle performances must be Phil Dale's animation of The Periwig Maker .
For most of the i lm, the puppet stands and stares, either looking out of a window or writing
a diary. There is little that could be described as action, but the puppet is so alive. He has a
static face yet his pupils move across his large eyes with so much expression, and his gestures
are timed so that the pauses speak volumes. I'm sure that Phil, like most of us, animated his
puppets is a whirl of action when he started. It takes much more discipline and control to move
puppets slowly and to include lengthy pauses. The puppet doesn't necessarily stop performing
just because it has stopped.
My favourite scene: The Periwig Maker - Charlie Hopkins, animator
This is one of the best animated shorts ever made. It's a fi lm that is beautiful throughout. The settings,
costume, puppets, animation and story are wonderful, if a little dark. A modest tale of a periwig maker
during the plague in the seventeenth century, that's slow burning. Kenneth Branagh narrates, reading
actual diaries of the time, over the subtle performances of the puppets.
The periwig maker is the observer of the terrible times, and is as much a victim of the plague as those
around him … he is also a victim of guilt. He witnesses the death of a little girl that he could not help out
of sheer caution or cowardice.
The little girl's family has died, and she is left alone boxed up in her plague-infested home, guarded by
a brute of a man waiting for her to die. The girl is lonely, and seeks company and comfort from the wig
maker, but sadly he cannot let her in, afraid that he too might get infected.
My favourite scene from this fi lm is the way the guilt of the man is acted out; through subtle
movements … he believes the little girl is in his home, though it's actually his imagination and guilt.
Sometimes the best animation has few or no movements to it at all, and this is evident in this scene,
and is all the more powerful for it. The wig maker's eyes move slowly around the room, his head
slightly twitching as the little girl explains her predicament …. It is cold, scary and moving.
It is a truly wonderful and remarkable fi lm, with a very sombre and sober twist.
I worked on a series at Cosgrove Hall called Rotten Ralph , whose style was all about slapstick,
involving very frantic movements. This was practically a three-dimensional cartoon, about
energy, big moves and extreme reactions. I found this enormously hard, as I
wanted to put lots of detail into the movement. I couldn't move a puppet across
a room in three frames. I wanted to spell out the mechanics of the walk or the
gesture, but that wasn't what was required. A move can be so large that it's in
danger of not relating to the previous frame, losing all meaning. The trick is to
make the huge moves, but to feather the move out with a few small increments at
the end, to suggest where the move has come from.