The wonders of London

I am temporarily back from London after a longer than planned stay, but I'm going back on Monday for a few more days. Daz's company is re-tiling a pool down there, so he's renting a very nice 3-bedroom flat for him and the other guys down in Kilburn, a few miles from the city centre, which I get to stay in for free - woohoo! Usually I can only afford to stay in the cheapest 'hotel' in London, a very grim place in Earls Court which became the inspiration for my 'Grey Heights Guesthouse' animation. It's unlikely that I'll be able to afford to spend so much time in London again, so I'm making the most of it whilst I can.

I travelled out to Woking on Thursday to meet up with director James Geard and talk about our collaboration, Walter Gloom. He had some fantastic sketches and ideas and has put together a great storyboard for me to work from. To see some of his drawings and follow his pre-production work, check out the Walter Gloom blog.

The rest of this post is mainly going to be me enthusing about London, no stop motion I'm afraid...

I love living in the North-West, but I have to admit that every time I go down to London I fall in love with the place a little more. I have no interest in the nightlife or shopping - I avoid both of these things like the plague, unless it's shopping for books or comics of course! The main things I love about London are the excellent art galleries and museums, the architecture and the public transport system (yup, I'm a real geek). London now comes a very close second to Vienna, Austria which is my favourite city in the world (for very similar reasons).

Visiting the British Museum is my version of a religious pilgrimage. My entire purpose in life is Art, and the British Museum is a cathedral to the entire history of human cultural expression throughout the world (the V&A is similar, only with more emphasis on the history of design rather than history in general, and mainly focusing on the last 1000 years or so). I spent two full days in the British Museum, and now I have finally, after 5 visits in 3 years, managed to see everything in the permanent displays (yes it really is that big).

My favourite bits of the British Museum are Mexico, the Asia section (China, India, Japan etc.), Africa and the Lewis Chessmen. I'm also a sucker for anything featuring ancient methods of writing. I could quite happily pitch a tent in the central court of the British Museum and live there permanently!

As for the V&A, my favourite bits are the Islamic Middle East and South Asia, among many others.
The other great thing about both museums is the amazing bookshops.

And then of course there is also the National Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, The Wellcome Collection, The Saatchi Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery, The Natural History Museum, The Science Museum, and many many other galleries and museums to be inspired by.

Along with my passion for looking at pretty much anything that's in a glass case, on a plinth or hanging on wall with a little information tag beside it, I also love the London Underground. There are several reasons for this. The tube map is a work of design genius and all those interconnected coloured lines and dots fuel my autistic side (I like trying to work out the most efficient route between two stations by time, distance, number of connections and which route is most aesthetically pleasing on the map... ). I also like the efficiency and convenience of it all (anyone reading this in London is shaking their head now). Even with the staff strikes, signal failures, people jumping under trains and security alerts, it is still much quicker and easier to get around than in the Bolton/Salford/Manchester area, where nothing interconnects properly, you have to wait ages between each bus/train and everything is run by different companies that require separate day tickets so it ends up costing a fortune.

Despite the wonders of London, there is no way I could survive living there. Apart from the fact that even renting a tiny bedsit costs more than twice as much as renting a good sized two bedroom house in Bolton, I'd probably die of over-stimulation (if such a thing is possible). London has the same effect on me as large quantities of sugar and brightly coloured cartoons have on small children (or the effect that the London Forbidden Planet megastore and Orbital Comics shop have on Daz). Most importantly though, the tap-water down there is horrible lime-scaley stuff that forms a skin on top of your tea and makes it taste funny, and I could never live in a city where you can't make a good cup of tea...

Anyway, enough of my London related ramblings, by next weekend I should have two new woolly monster puppets to post about. Whilst in London I've also been doing some drawings for a little comic/artist-book type thing I want to put together and print a short run of, but I'll post more about that if and when I eventually finish it, so I can try to sell you all a copy!

Finally, some alien industral set photos!

At last, here they are, some photos of my woolly monsters in their finished alien technology set, ready to animate! The photos were taken using my new FZ50 and you can click on them to see the BIG versions on flickr:











It's probably best not to ask what the heck is going on in the last photo!

Phyllis Pamplemousse

I can now reveal my most recent woolly monster toy, as it is now safely with its new owner Helen Gibbons (aka Shine). Helen is a incredibly talented fibre-artist and was a fellow 'intellectual rebel' when we were at high school together ('intellectual rebel' sounds better than trying to explain the chaos that was TEKAYL... eh Helen!). I made her a monster in exchange for a fantastic pair of hand-knitted socks she made for me, which are currently keeping my feet toasty warm.

Her special monster requests were:

Fierceness

Colours you can see from space

Lots of legs/tentacles

Lots of eyes

The result is the very toothy, seven-legged monster, Phyllis Pamplemousse:

Phyllis is pretty big (I forgot to measure her before I put her in the post, but I'd guess she's about 14" diameter) and her main body is made of crimson acrylic doubleknit yarn crocheted together with bright scarlet mohair to make a thick fuzzy fabric. The rest of her is made of acrylic doubleknit in dark purple, light violet, a golden yellow colour and black. The eye buttons are just a selection of buttons I already had in my button boxes, but finding the perfect buttons for teeth was a bigger challenge!

I knew I needed some big toothy looking toggles for optimum fierceness and set about trying to find some of those shark-tooth shaped toggles that you used to find on duffle coats, only to find that they must be the most out of fashion buttons in the world. After trips to Bury, Chorley and Bolton markets, numerous habedashery shops and lots of internet button suppliers, I could only find some ugly dark grey ones - not toothy at all. In the end, ebay came to my rescue and I found some flat bottomed white toggles that were even more perfect for Phyllis than the shark-tooth ones I had originally imagined!

Here is Phyllis' story:

Domo, sketchbook swapping and more very useful gifts from Daz...

Daz bought me a couple of badges last week with a cute monster character called Domo on them. I typed his name into google to find out a bit more about him and it turns out he is the star of his own stop-motion TV series, look: http://www.domonation.com/
He's a brown plush monster with a big mouth who sweats a lot, and he apparently started off life as a Japanese TV station mascot appearing in animated channel idents, and now he has his own show in the US on Nickelodeon. Anyway, I think he's rather endearing.

Other news:
John Hankins (castlegardener), the animator who sent me the samurai puppet has had an inspired idea for an international sketchbook swap which I am excited to be taking part in. Basically 10 animators from around the world buy a sketchbook each. You do five drawings then mail your sketchbook to the next person in the circle, who does five more sketches, then mails it on again and so on... Several months later each artist gets their own sketchbook back, filled with sketches by every artist taking part. I am between Nofby (Newcastle, UK) who sends the sketchbooks to me, and Emmyymme (Winnipeg, Canada) who I post the books on to. I think it's going to be a really interesting and hopefully it will be the first of many more sketchbook swaps.

I mentioned in a previous post about my boyfriend always surprising me with unusual yet very useful gifts. Well last week he excelled himself by coming back from a work trip to the big trade wholesale store with two packs of superfine white milliput (the stuff that's usually most expensive) and a pint bottle of Copydex (liquid latex). What more could a woman ask for? :)

Woohoo woohoo, I won a monster!

My grim guesthouse short (the monster under the bed animation) won third prize in the Toronto Animated Image Society monsterjam competition! I have no idea why the judges picked me - I am sure there were lots and lots of animations that were better than mine, Grant's included - but nevertheless I came third.... despite the fact I've never even been to Canada!

I won a Monster Factory handmade plush monster toy, which is very exciting too, especially as they are one of the companies that inspired me to start making my own woolly monsters, long before I even thought about trying to animate them. Rather fitting prize really. I am eagerly awaiting my parcel from Canada containing something cute and monstrous...

Alien scenery and plants...

The alien plants are finished, and I've nearly finished the set for my alien animation.

Here are the alien plants, all latexed up and shiny and bobbly:

Then there is the planet surface, which is almost finished (the photo was taken whilst parts of it were still wet):

The large hill is polystyrene cut into a vague hill shape with a hot wire tool, the smaller hills are crumpled newspaper. I stuck these to a sheet of particle board, then made a paper-mache 'clay' by soaking shredded newspaper in a mixture of PVA glue and water, mixing occasionally with my hands until it had a texture like wet clay. I spread an unever layer of this over everything, then when it was slightly drier I smoothed PVA over the surface with my hand to smooth and seal it. All in all it took about 1 litre (that's 2 pints) of PVA and 4 free local newspapers.

I bought some emulsion paint tester pots - fireside (a dark rich red), sundried tomato (a darkish orangey red) and classic red (bright post-box red). When the planet surface was dry, I painted it with the three shades of red in a blotchy manner. When that dried I made a mixture of PVA glue and dark red paint and spread on a thick layer before sprinkling 'coarse iron ore ballast' (from a hobby shop) onto it. Before the glue dried fully (but dry enough to stick the ballast in place) I painted on a thin layer of watered down PVA/paint mixture to firmly fix it, and make the colour of the ballast match the painted surface more. When that was dry I painted on a 'dirty wash' (black drawing ink, red drawing ink, a little dark red paint and quite a bit of water) so it would sink into the recesses on the set and make them darker. After that, I dry brushed a little bright 'classic red' paint across the surface to highlight the texture.

I might be adding some blue crystal clusters on the surface too, but I'm not sure yet.

I've also done the sky, which is purple:

It is a sheet of white foamboard (still 2 for 1 at the craft shop - woohoo!) which I took into the back yard and covered in spray paint. I used mostly spray paint I had left over from my student days when I worked with it a lot. I used navy blue, burgundy red, metallic purple, dark purple and light violet. The photo isn't too good because I took it when the paint was still wet, and very reflective.

Next it's onto puppet building...

More prop and scenery construction

I have my first commission, woohoo! It's a short (less that 15 seconds) slot for a music video. I've been given total creative freedom, so I am having a lot of fun with the set and puppet designs. I am setting it on an alien planet, so I can go wild with the plants and scenery which, for me anyway, is all very exciting!

I have also been constructing props and scenery for the short I am planning to make with the samurai puppet that John Hankins sent me. This project is currently on hold though until I finish the commission. I made John a rather endearing puppet and sent it to him the other day, but I can't say any more about it until it arrives in Hawaii because I don't want to spoil John's surprise.

Here are some photos of the scenery I have made so far for the samurai animation, which will be set in a garden. Please note that I am going for a very stylised look - these aren't meant to be realistic! Sorry about the bad photos. My studio has no natural light (for animation purposes) so I took them with a flash, and they don't look great.

These are some fruit trees for the background of the scene. They are wire covered in papier-mache then painted. The foliage is made of snipped up green pan scourers, and the fruits are yellow plastic ball bearings (for shooting from BB guns).


These are ornamental rose trees made from builders 'mice' wire (usually used in reinforced concrete) wrapped round papier-mache balls, which have been painted green. Then I glued on paper leaves and ribbon roses.

Here are an assortment of background bushes. They are papier-mache again. The two on the left are covered in three shades of embroidery silk snipped up and layered with Copydex (liquid latex). The one on the right is snipped up pan scourers. The 'flowers' are pearlescent seed beeds.

This is a garden ornament or memorial of some description. It's a small plastic tub with a cotton reel, a thimble, a button and a dome headed nut glued to the top of it (all junk I have collected over the years), then painted to look like marble and bronze (sort of).

The great thing about all these bits of scenery is that they are made of junk and very cheap materials. My boyfriend gave me a bucket of steel wire 'mice' as a present (other women get flowers, I get builders tools and materials - which is good because I do prefer getting random hardware) so that was free. The papier-mache is obviously just old newpapers and watered down cheap PVA glue. The green pan scourers, yellow plastic BBs and embroidery silks were bought in bulk packs from £1 shops. The silk roses were 3p each from the sewing stall on Bolton market. The most expensive material was the Copydex, which was £4 for a small bottle, but for future Copydex purchases I have found a supplier where I can buy the stuff in 1 litre and 5 litre bottles at a discount price.

I'm mid-way through making some alien plants for the commissioned animation. Here are the photos of how I made the basic structures:

These are some bobbly plants which are made from some round door knobs I got in a bulk value pack from B&Q and those useful little yellow BBs again. I had to use good old fashioned 'strong glue' for sticking the balls on, as with PVA and Copydex the set up time was too long and superglue was not tacky enough (too watery). The strong glue worked well, as it partially melted the plastic coating on the doorknobs, which seemed to increase the 'grab' and reduce the set up time of the glue. One thing I would advise - don't make 6 of these in an unventilated room like I did. After a while those little BBs looked like they were moving around of their own accord and the next morning I had a banging hangover. In future I will dig out my vapour mask to use for jobs like this!

These plants will be painted with layers of coloured liquid latex, to make them look shiny, rubbery and...well...like alien plants I suppose.

This is a slightly out of focus photo of some alien trees. They are 'tumble drier balls' (£1 shop) with trunks made from wire coated in epoxy putty. As you can see, they are being painted with layers of purple liquid latex. Details will be added later with a contrasting shade of liquid latex.

I will post photos of the finished alien plants soon.

I have also made a space castle or an elaborate rocketship (or whatever you want it to be) to go in the background.

It is a bizarre combination of interesting bits and bobs I have collected over the years. Two wooden door knobs, a cedarwood moth repellant disk thingy, some wooden cocktail forks, two glue tube lids and an assortment of different beads. It was decorated with acrylic paint and plastic 'gems'.