Disaster has struck! My short experimental animations have somehow vanished off the college computer network. And of course, I hadn’t backed them up. I had hoped that the IT man would be able to retrieve them from wherever they’ve gone, but after trying for quite a while, he had to admit defeat. This is frustrating beyond words, but rather then dwell on what I’ve lost, I’ve tried to focus on redoing the animations. Thankfully, I still have the photographs that were used to make them – if I’d lost those too, I would definitely have cried. Lesson learnt: BACK UP ALL MY FILES (and then back them up again).
I’m still working on a few canvases in between other things. I often worry that my work is too “safe”. But yesterday, we went as a college group to the British Art Show in Nottingham, which served as a reminder that really, anything can be “Art”. I have an undying love for illustration and narrative, so it pleased me to see several illustrative portrait works (ironically illustrative?!). I also loved some of the video pieces – Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’ and Elizabeth Price’s ‘User Group Disco (Hall of Sculptures)’.
Here’s the first “cells” stop motion animation (mark II), made using chalk. I have a small MP4 player to play the looped animation on, which will be embedded within a larger mixed media piece of work (still under construction). The plan is to have several different screens playing short animations within the same work.
“cells” stop motion animation (short)
