The closing Best of Fest gala on Sunday, perhaps best indicated the nature of the festival. Awards were made based on a capacity for the bizarre or irreverent, the transformative and thought provoking. LIAF’s best film was awarded to The Dog Apartment, directed by Priit Tender and produced by Estonian studio, Nukufilm. The characters in this stop motion short were imbued with a strange, allegorical luminosity. A retired ballet dancer, an apartment that barked subject to a steady supply of sausages and a cockerel with an axe for a face. Elsewhere, LIAF awarded the epic and odyssey-inducing animations of Wataru Iwata. Iwata’s ‘Sphere’ evoked an endless continuum in space, a stream of technologically engineered animation and tunnel-like data visualizations set to an impressive score of piano music.

Wataru Iwata’s ‘Sphere’

Whichever part of LIAF’s programme you were most drawn to, there was a sense of exploration and the dipping of one’s toe into a ready-realised animated world. Abigail Addison investigated the art of world-building in this year’s figures in focus program, ‘The Magical World’. During the screening, she brought together nine shorts which drew inspiration from the surrealist Leonora Carrington, an often underappreciated and deeply hermetic artist. Carrington’s painterly lands depict the occupations of strange creatures, their involvement with alchemy, archaic magic practices, and entry into the spirit world.

Following the films, Addison gathered three directors; Anna Bunting-Branch, Renee Zhan and Réka Bucsi as well as Carmen Hannibal, a PhD Candidate of Animation Studies at the RCA. Addison spoke of a ‘science’ to the worlds each of the directors had created. With animated film it was possible to start from nothing and build outwards, subject to an idiosyncratic authorship. The animators are in effect demi-gods, like Carrington, who said “I’ve always had access to other worlds. We all do. Because we dream.”

The task of imagining a world beyond our own, of wanting a world into existence, must begin somewhere. Much like the empirical laws of science that define our world, these can only be realized through repeated experimentation and observation. Réka Bucsi described her approach to filmmaking in these terms. She starts to work on small scenes or interactions between characters. And then, once she has a healthy collection of these, she can begin to draw parallels between their behaviours, a process which culminated in her film LOVE. In a sense, Bucsi is a zoologist to her own creations. LOVE explores romantic affection in three chapters, observing the inhabitants of fantastical planets with a scientific impartiality.

Réka Bucsi’s ‘Solar Walk’

This sentiment became more apparent at Réka Bucsi’s retrospective held at the Horse Hospital later on in the festival. During ‘Solar Walk’, her most ambitious film to date, mysterious bunny-eared creatures exhibit a scientific curiosity of their surroundings. The film begins with their experiments. Objects floating in the cosmos, seemingly unrelated, are joined to form kinetic sculptures. At first the forces impacting the objects are unknown, then it is revealed to be the central creatures of Bucsi’s tale doing all the work, licking and sticking parts together in a child-like fashion.

There is perhaps something self-referential about this scene to Bucsi’s process. Elsewhere at the festival, other creators used their artistic process to further inform the act of storytelling. Ainslie Henderson approached the stage to accept his award for Best British Film, a worthy accolade to his ambitious stop-motion short ‘Shackle’, shot entirely outdoors beneath a canopy of trees. Henderson noted that the idea for the film initially came from the principle of making art for art’s sake. His characters, beautifully fabricated from natural materials, are similar to Busci’s in their playfulness. One character, made from downy white feathers, begins by selecting a pinecone. In their hands it cycles through its natural variations. Henderson makes wonderful use of replacement animation. All the while the world around them changes. The dappled light between the trees shifts in temporal motion, the breeze enacts the canopy into an agitated, rhythmic dance.

Ainslie Henderson’s ‘Shackle’

Alternately to Bucsi, Henderson extracts his visual language from the natural world, rather than fabricating it entirely. He sheds light on previously mundane objects, a pinecone, a fallen leaf or crab apple. In ‘Shackle’ these are magic objects, coveted by his characters and effective talismans for the entrance into magical worlds or perhaps the very experience of artmaking itself. Once the creatures of Shackle have perfected their technique, the forest is drawn into harmony, a symphony of terrestrial magic awaits.

There is, it seems, something in the spirit of LIAF which encompasses Ainslie Henderson’s words ‘art for art’s sake’. Each year, the programme offers films new perspectives, new plains of colour, texture and sound to roam. All you need bring is an open mind.

The post Laws of Motion: London International Animation Festival 2022 Review appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.

In the talk that followed, filmmakers were invited onto stage for a Q&A. Each of the films carried a unique message, touching upon issues surrounding race, gay rights, body image, sexual harassment, and gender equality. Amidst a feeling of mutual admiration for one another, the directors considered the way in which these messages were delivered in alternate ways: ‘To be direct or indirect?’ or, as one audience member put it, ‘shouty or not shouty’. Comfort Arthur, director of ‘Black Barbie’, explained how she always liked to allow space in a film for the audience to project their own images. Her film ‘Black Barbie’ explored a culture of skin bleaching and the cosmetic industry which devalued the beauty of darker women.

Anna, Cat and Mouse by Vayrua Yakovleva

Other films like ‘Anna, Cat and Mouse’ were even more subtle in their approach, relying on a nonverbal, visual language to convey an atmosphere of domestic abuse. The characters of Vayrua Yakovleva’s film were synchronistic in their transformations between cat and mouse, abuser and the abused. The effect was beautiful in that the images alone were enough to capture the dynamic relationship between the paper cut-out figures. By comparison films like Stacy Bias’s ‘Flying While Fat’ were more didactic. Bias combined interviews, informative motion graphics and anecdotes to reveal harsh truths about the way fat people are treated by airlines and other customers. Where information is key, it’s clear why a political filmmaker might be drawn to explainer video style animation. On the flipside Yakovleva relied on universal images of the hunter and the hunted to reach audiences.

Elsewhere at LIAF the programme was spread across several unique locations. These included the The Horse Hospital for an evening of Indie Japanese Animation and the Puppet Barge for Joseph Wallace’s retrospective. Whilst the political films of the gala were centered around their subjects, the ‘Trippy Worlds of Indie Japanese Animation’ took audiences on a mind-bending journey through nonsensical landscapes. In particular ‘A Bite of Bone’ relied on memory images, submerged dream logic and the undulating rhythm of dots on paper to tell a tale of childhood loss. Other animations sent viewers sleep-walking through neo-noir cityscapes. ‘Jungle Taxi’ and ‘Hunter’ characterized the emerging independent Japanese scene in their inky resemblance to graphic novels, a great jumping off point for any budding animator.

Natural Disaster by Joseph Wallace

At the Puppet Theatre Barge, it was wonderful to see the films of Joseph Wallace, a director whose steady output of puppet animation has culminated in his most ambitious project yet ‘Salvation Has No Name’. The stop-motion short, having just entered post-production, has thronged together a variety of animated talent to shed light on the refugee crisis. In the half-lit barge, humans and puppets alike gathered to watch films spanning from 2007 to present. As with any retrospective, it’s always rewarding to see the development of an artist from humble beginnings to more ambitious work. Wallace’s output of 1-2 films a year show the benefits of prolific filmmaking especially when starting out – certainly a feat to be reckoned with due to the notoriously slow form of stop-motion animation.  Wallace attributed magazine and paper cut-outs to his guerrilla-style animations, being resourceful with found materials under the constraints of time and budget and then later joked ‘cut to me at 3 am moving bits of paper’.

LIAF audiences regrouped at the Barbican for the Best of Fest celebration and announcement of the winning films on Sunday. The spectrum of films chosen were witty, wry, and wonderfully absurd. And after a 10-day stint of watching dozens of animations, audience members may have been inclined to project their own images or perhaps to simply allow the animated imagery wash over their reclining minds.

The post Projecting Our Images: LIAF 2021 Review appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.

Back in 1996, the Neverhood Chronicles, were released in Japan. This Claymation point-and-click adventure was an early attempt to fuse the styles. However, efforts to transport players into stop motion environments are becoming far more sophisticated in recent years. In 2019, GYMNASIA, an installation from Clyde Henry Productions, provided audiences with uncanny experiences of VR, merging 360-degree video with stop-motion and CGI: the real with the unreal. Commercial game studios such as State of Play have also traded in pixels for a handmade aesthetic. In the BAFTA winning puzzle platformer, Lumino City, everything is built from paper, card and powered by real motors. The city was filmed in real time as a backdrop, whilst Lumi, a sprite-based playable character, is set to explore this fantastic world.

Perhaps these creators are tapping into a desire for more sensory, tactile experiences? The materiality of stop-motion has long since incited delight in the viewer and by inviting the form into interactive space, one might create a new kind of dynamic experience. Cologne based Slow Bros are working hard to push the envelope of stop-motion gaming with their upcoming game Harold Halibut… and the breadth of the project is astounding.

Every asset is made by hand. Stop-motion puppets, sets and props are lovingly crafted and then imported into the game using photogrammetry. This clever method of 3D scanning can account for missing information using photographs of an object from different angles, then calibrating the information on a computer using 3D geometry.

Harold Halibut © Slow Bros. UG (haftungsbeschränkt), 2021

The story follows the adventures of a janitor, Harold, and is tinged with tragic irony. In the midst of the Cold War, tensions are high and a giant spaceship is built to set a course across the stars, safely delivering its human passengers to an inhabitable planet. The journey takes 200 years. When they finally get there, they find the planet is made up entirely of water (and everyone is still dressed circa. 1970).

Harold Halibut © Slow Bros. UG (haftungsbeschränkt), 2021

We spoke to Ole Tillmann, Slow Bros Art Director, about the inspirations and technical challenges behind this extraordinary game.

You have said that Harold Halibut was first imagined over a dinner-table conversation. I am sure many would have liked to have been a fly on the wall for that occasion! Could you tell us how the subaquatic world of Harold Halibut was born? 

Yes, I would hope for a lot of projects to start that way! It was born from a few loose cornerstones. Wanting to make a game, also sort of wanting to make films- I think the four of us all shared a story telling background of some kind or another. We also really easily and quickly agreed on water as the basic element, visually but also esoterically it just felt like a dense thing to start with. Also having a small and confined underwater society and looking at relationships within that bubble.

When it comes to world-building, how collaborative is this process within your team?

It was very collaborative and probably the biggest catalyst for the whole project. We worked very harmoniously from the get-go, sitting around a table and making things up. For me in particular it was nice to then try and summarize thoughts via drawings and feed that back into the creative loop. Like the new drawing of an environment, we had talked about would spark further ideas in conversation about specific rooms or people in that space and so forth.

It continued to be collaborative in that the world building is so closely related to story writing which in turn is interwoven with game design.

Harold Halibut © Slow Bros. UG (haftungsbeschränkt), 2021

What led to the introduction of photogrammetry to your pipeline? What challenges have arisen from using this technology?

Experiments for the most part. At first, we tried to have just stop-motion, so characters in front of a green screen doing various walking or grabbing motions. We were then looking for a way to light the characters dynamically so when a player chose to walk past a lamp the light would affect them accordingly. We played with having just parallax two dimensional backgrounds, then a projection of a photographed background on a rudimentary digital 3D object and when we saw how well all that worked we had our friend Ilja Burzev basically consult us on how, theoretically, the whole thing could be transferred into a digital 3D space…

We simultaneously started to get a sense of the amount of animations that might be required via conventional stop-motion and had to make the hard decision to switch to photogrammetry. If you’re interested in where a similar technical approach might have led you should take a look at ‘Vokabulantis’, from a group of very talented stop-motion animators based in Denmark.

Challenges so far only relate to technical-game-making-feasibility. Like we were having trouble with having such a huge amount of really detailed, large, photographic textures in the game for it to run on all the consoles and everything but that’s been solved since.

Could you tell us more about how you have been able to preserve the imperfections of traditional stop-motion techniques- for example the texture, space and physicality of real objects as well as the animation style within gameplay?

I now think a lot of that is our team and how well everyone works with each other. I think in the past I didn’t fully appreciate how many tiny factors come together in the final thing. I just thought it was a shared patience for detail or something. The most basic layer is good photographs and surface scans from a befriended company that developed a really amazing 3D scanner. Then it really helped that all 4 people that subsequently worked with that material had each of the actual objects in front of them at the computer to do comparisons, experiment with the real texture against a light source etc. Aside from that we then treated all the 3D stuff as if it were real, in a stop motion set and that scale, too.

As a multi-disciplined team your inspirations must be quite diverse! Could you name some which you feel have directly influenced Harold?

This is so hard! Ok, so for the sake of not renaming obvious pop cultural (e.g. Wes Anderson or Zelda which we both admire like all the world) I put together a list of more niche influences:

Archigram (British conceptual architecture firm during 1960s), Korean/Japanese/Belgian/Scandinavian/Australian architecture (see Atelier Bowwow, Terunobu Fujimori, Bureau A, DVVT Architects, Assemble, Kazuo Shinohara, NAAD, Schemata ), the Japan-Criterion-collection if there is such a thing, all of the Disney scale anime films that swept over here in the 90s including Myazaki, Satoshi Kon, Katsuhiro Otomo, Mamoru Oshii etc., more vaguely: Western surrealist painting, Futurism/Italian architect/designer Ettore Sottsass (before Memphis in particular), Jean Giraud (Moebius) particularly the Giger/Jodorowsky collaborations, Dieter Rahms type of Designs, all the beauty shots of food in manga, the gross close-ups in 90s animation like Ren & Stimpy, generally western weekend breakfast tv.. I think that’s a good slice.

How have you managed to secure funding for the project?

Through government film/game funding and art funding. Since we started Germany has expanded its game funding a little and I feel like with everyone I’ve talked to at events from around the world, usually their governments are often at least in the process of pushing something similar in their countries. Its surprisingly slow (considering the age of games and their position as the most lucrative media thing in the world by now which is usually what the relevant institutions are concerned with) but yeah, some countries are even offering funding for relocating to their place.

Harold Halibut © Slow Bros. UG (haftungsbeschränkt), 2021

Do you often find yourself torn between the physical objects and their CG counterparts? When it comes to lighting for example, do you do tests in real life before turning to the computer?

Yes, I made a lot of the physical objects like the characters/puppets which is why I am pretty attached to that side of things. But it adds so many possibilities in the long run that I’m glad it ultimately ends up in the computer.

We do also use them for tests and they’re all over the office which is nice because a lot of times games are made in grey office spaces.

Do you think the hand-crafted aspects of your game will change the way people interact with them?

Yes, I would hope so. But in a very abstract sense. Like one of the most common responses to people playing the small demo that we’ve been able to show at festivals and trade shows is that there’s a very specific, positive sense to being able to puppeteer a puppet.

Also, it supports the idea of mostly playing for the sake of other-worldly-immersion (at least to me that’s a thing I like a lot about what we made.) It pays off to just noodle about and look at everything just because eeeevery last 1 cm coffee cup was carefully made and then passed through between 5-7 other people’s hands or eyes to then arrive in front of whoever is playing. And I truly believe that’s apparent somehow.

What was behind the decision to have a singular ending to the game, rather than multiple possible endings?

Oof, because one ending is hard enough to figure out! Maybe if we’d arrived at different ends in our writing process we might have included them.

As the spaceship Harold inhabits is made up of interconnected sets, would it be theoretically possible to connect them all together in physical space…to form a giant installation of sorts?

Haha hmm, yes, I think a lot of it could but we also built at roughly 3 different scales so we could have almost all the rooms but empty, probably. They are already available as a 3D installation, though, and we`ve been considering a VR exhibit of some kind. We’ll have to publish the game first, though

Lastly, is there a release date in sight for Harold Halibut?

No, I’m still not allowed to say, unfortunately.

While we await patiently for Harold Halibut’s release, it is perhaps humbling to take account of the amount of work and creativity going into a game such as this. Slow Bros draw some of their influences from a 1960s group called Archigram. This group of radical architects made hypothetical designs of fantastic, impossible structures, one such being the Walking City, a humungous collection of self-contained pods, forged together to create a city with insect-like legs to walk upon.

This out-of-the-box thinking has clearly inspired the Harold Halibut project; science-fiction realities promised to us in the wake of the 1960s space-race imbue the imagination with limitlessness and technological idealism. It takes a maverick and an artist to want to transport a society across the stars but perhaps also to make a game like Harold Halibut.

Harold Halibut © Slow Bros. UG (haftungsbeschränkt), 2021

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Sophie Koko Gate’s Slug Life

This was the case for Sophie Koko Gate’s Slug Life. Fans of Koko Gate will recognize her trademark style of sweaty, fleshy, oozing animation. The film followed a day in the life of Tanya as she artificially created her perfect slug companion. The short was dripping with seduction and mucus, yet it was not the only film to exhibit grotesque themes. In the discussion which followed, this was deconstructed by visual artist, Katerina Athanasopoulou, who related the attraction to the grotesque to an embracing of the alien and unknown. That which could be termed ‘other’ or ‘monstrous’ is reclaimed and celebrated when Tanya locks tongues with her illustrious slug or the characters of Flóra Anna Buda’s Entropia shop for crunchy maggots at the supermarket. This is quite a departure from your average shoot em up’ style Sci-Fi film. The filmmakers procure an interest in the strange or gross rather than reacting with abject fear or hostility.

Flóra Anna Buda was also present during the post-screening conversation, as was Chiara Sgatti with her film, The Thing I Left Behind and academic Lilly Husbands. Buda may be one to watch for future creations, having picked up a Teddy Award at Berlinale earlier this year for her graduation film. Additionally, she had a hand in the making of Nadja Andrasev’s Symbiosis which featured later on into LIAF’s selection.

Flóra Anna Buda’s Entropia

Also featured in the Opening Gala,The Law of Celly, directed by Mariola Brillowska was distinct as a foreboding portent for an automated world. In Brillowska’s version of a not-so-distant future, the viewer is taken on a nauseating journey. The narrator describes the doctrine of a nation which makes it an imperative to own a mobile phone. In this way, the government is able to harbor the data of the unemployed for ‘embedded in this device are sensors which monitor bodily functions.’. Even the passing of urine can be monetized in this perverse reality. Brillowska’s provides her hyper-cynical commentary to a civilization which has carelessly discarded freedom and human rights. This film really has to be seen to be believed. Brillowska’s use of bright and garish colours conceals the incredibly bleak message at its core. The animation style is somewhat crude, yet the originality of its idea wins out, as was the key to other films in the selection, depicting the alarming advancement of technology and the horrors that may wait.

Elsewhere in LIAF’s programme, audience members enjoyed the rich visual languages made possible through animated film. Jiaqi Wang’s short 2.3 x 2.6 x 3.2 portrayed the experiences of a young boy with a tumor of these exact dimensions. The film appeared to be made up of flickering lino-cut prints. This technique is not widely pursued for obvious reasons. However, the textures of the print were perfectly akin to the visceral tone of the film – the boy’s exploration of his own anatomy and the uncertainty of his disease.

Jiaqi Wang’s short 2.3 x 2.6 x 3.2

Perhaps it is when form meets subject that we are most inclined to let a film settle in our memory. The coincidentally titled Mémorable (see our interview with Bruno Collet) was another film which stole hearts at this year’s LIAF. Screened among the ‘Playing with Emotion’ selection, the stop-motion film adopted a painterly style. It follows Louis, a retired artist, and his wife. Through the eyes of Louis, characters and objects begin to mutate. A phone dissolves into marbled plasticine and friends at a dinner party come to resemble Francis Bacon portraits. Altogether, the changes that occur in Louis’ world are consummated as a subtle and poignant rendering of the effects of dementia, (though this is never plainly stated.)

The films succeeds, overwhelmingly, due to its marriage of style and substance. The rippling, merging plasticine is a perfect visual analogy of Louis’ degenerating world. Louis and his wife struggle to connect as reality becomes abstract, separated and fluid.

The post ‘To Boldly Go…’ London International Animation Festival 2019 Review appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.

Over a ten day programme, LIAF preceded to delve into the multidimensional world of animation, showcasing select programmes geared towards the fanatic. Whether you’re a lover of experimental animation or a creepy coffin dweller in search of your next gory fix, the shorts selection was organised accordingly. These programmes were tailored to give independent animation the attention it deserves. LIAF additionally grouped its longer shorts into a ‘Long Shorts’ category. An interesting decision, given that each short ran from 15-20 minutes and required a truly enduring audience.  For these highly ambitious projects you really had to be in it for the long-haul and, as indicated in the official hand-out: ‘Some films need extra time to develop their themes, to grow and draw us more comprehensively into their worlds”.

It truly was the world-building facet of these animations which unified the programme. Each film conjured up new systems of logic within the constraints of its narrative. Finity Calling, which won the jury award for best sound design, was avant-garde through and through. The director, Jasper Kuipers, fabricated a single scene involving five people seated around a table. Physical elements of his production are lavish and opulent. The guests at the banquet are clothed in extravagant attire (clothes which could have been born from the mind of Alexander McQueen.) The food is far too beautiful to be eaten and it is the unruly distribution of these elegant treats which leads to the descent of order.

A certain boy beneath the table is hungry for scraps. We have no idea who he is, how he has come to be involved in this whole, bizarre affair. Kuipers tantalizes the viewer with a tiny fraction of his world. We begin to comprehend Finity Calling to be in fact a microcosm of a vast and complex macrocosm. The film, which delivers its visuals in stunning, hyper-real detail, actually leaves a lot to the imagination. We are left with so many unanswered questions, but it is perhaps the unknown which we relish in as audiences.

Finity Calling by Jasper Kuipers

Other films in the Long Shorts programme follow suit. Might animation have a unique ability to nods its head to the limitless, to usher us into the boundless depths of space, time and consciousness? Films like Buksi’s Solar Walk and Boris Labbe’s La Chute affirm this belief, evoking mysterious, cosmic consequences. Similarly, Reruns and Mermaids and Rhinos follow a dream-like logic. At this level, animated shorts are given permission to extend their reach. They can be ambidextrous in style, whilst also utilising the basic qualities of animation to their full potential: morph, transform, distort and warp; what could you create for a 20 minute short?

Elsewhere at LIAF, ‘Female Figures’ took centre stage in a special programme followed by a panel of contributing directors. This stimulating Q&A, led by Abigail Addison of Animate Projects, included Thalma Goldman Cohen, Kate Jessop and Jenny Jokela. Jez Stewart, a BFI National Archive curator, was also assembled to speak on behalf of feminist animation- although there were jests with regard to him being the only man on the panel.

This year, Addison wrangled twelve films from the animated universe. The selection worked to expose and cultivate varied perceptions surrounding the female body, attitudes towards female sexuality and unfamiliar realms of desire. The sometimes-ugly truths and bittersweet memories of romantic relationships were all ingredients to this emotional stew. Not to mention a dash a BDSM, curtesy of Bogna Kowalczyk’s Vanilla Whip.

Jenny Jokela’s film Barbeque, came about from her reaction to the #MeToo movement. It’s fluid, painted style portrays the aftermath to an abusive relationship. The female figures found here are often lurid and macabre; women remove their skin to expose muscle tissue and large fish emanate from their vaginas. Jokela explained how she wanted to make the women seem as strange and gruesome as possible in an effort to desexualise their experiences. Her process was as organic as the film essentially felt. Discarding a traditional storyboarding technique, she began with a large painting, and developed each scene from its various sections.

Barbeque by Jenny Jokela

The importance of female animators working to counteract a history of the male-gaze was iterated in the discussion. Jez Stewart astutely pointed out that it was likely the element of control in animation which has attracted feminist animators to the drawing table. The frame by frame precision which goes into constructing a female figure, allows the animator to have total sovereignty over who she is, what she looks and sounds like. Therefore, when the task of conveying female forms is placed back into the hands of a women, it becomes a direct reclamation of femininity.

The post LIAF 2018 – An End of Year Revisit appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.

Once again, we’ll visit the surreal landscapes inhabited by Cegavske’s puppet creations. Her artistic lens is perhaps unique in its ability to magnify the lives of small creatures, playing out the extreme emotions of animals which live in sheltered dwellings. In Blood Tea, we met with the oak-dwellers, who live beneath the hollowed-out trunk of an oak tree. These animals have beaks yet exert a mammalian tenderness. Their peaceful existence is thrown into disarray when the object of their affection (a doll) is stolen and they must embark on a quest to reclaim it.

Blood Tea and Red String (Dir. Christiane Cegavske) [Source]

Cegavske’s decision to abstain from dialogue and speech in her work, permits the opening up of interpretation. Her message needn’t be translated to enter film festivals, for there is something buried (in the sand) that will take root intuitively. Her films are instead formed from a language of personal mythos, as are her paintings and poetry. Cegavske distils inspiration into an exclusive colour palette and a creative process, such as hers, is not unlike alchemy. Red, Black and White: these are the essences which formulate her miniature tales. We interviewed Christiane Cegavske to discuss the progress of her next feature and to get an insight into her practice.

Blood Tea and Red String (Dir. Christiane Cegavske) [Source]

I think my audiences find the characters compelling. The tactile intimacy in the way the characters are filmed where the textures of the fur and clothing emphasise their materiality and dimensionality, making them seem entirely real even though they are impossible creatures. Despite the absence of dialogue, their gestures and communications are readable and their emotional states relatable so they seem like real, living beings. The overall aesthetic, the colour palette, the strangeness of the story and the immersive environment, at once familiar and foreign, also seem to be a draw.

Your creative process has changed quite a bit since the completion of Blood Tea and Red String. During the production of Seed in the Sand, you’ve employed a few interns along the way. Fans of your work can now also follow the film’s development online as you post pictures and videos. As an artist, how do you feel your work is affected by this kind of exposure? Have you enjoyed opening up the artistic process to other people?

I like to show work in progress. Feedback and appreciation help me to persevere over this long-term project. I think my creative process has remained much the same, I now have a greater platform to share it. I am more mindful of documenting progress in ways I didn’t or couldn’t while working on Blood Tea and Red String. I am much more aware of cinematic editing techniques, meaningful juxtapositions, and intentional symbolism now, though, I still allow much of the narrative to flow along in dream-logic fashion just as it comes to me.

Production Still from Seed in the Sand [Source]

I haven’t set out to give a specific lesson, but you can see the consequences of the actions of the characters, both positive and negative. That can be instructive. In Blood Tea and Red String, everyone loses that which they were initially striving for. The protagonists and one of the antagonists evolve in their quest to reclaim the doll. As soon as the Oak Dwellers see the bird girl, fragile and alive, their purpose becomes rescue. When the one white mouse sees the bird girl born out of the doll, his epiphany brings transformation and a new goal. Two of the mice never shift their focus and end up with the object of their desire, but it is broken. I avoid creating characters who embody absolute evil. The antagonist’s selfish deeds can be considered bad from the protagonist view, but could be interpreted as justifiable by them. Both sides engage in myopic and self-serving behaviour as well as selfless acts.

As any stop-motion animator will know, the filmmaking process requires ceaseless dedication, hard work and attention to detail. This is perhaps especially true for you, as you work primarily alone upon all facets of filmmaking. The final product must therefore be a huge personal accomplishment. How do you manage to remain motivated when dates of completion are set so far into the future?

I break up the work into manageable pieces in a long-term production schedule with solid goals dispersed along the way. Finish a puppet, build a set, complete a scene; each is a small triumph. Opportunities to show my work in progress are also very rewarding and motivational. When my audience gives me a positive response and expresses a desire to see more, it spurs me on.

You have already released some astonishing clips of sand in tidal motion. What was your experience of animating with sand prior to the decision to include it in your film? It must have been extraordinarily challenging to build your wave generator!

I had very little experience in sand animation before this scene. The design for the wave generator came to me in a flash of inspiration and it was very exciting to build it. I had two interns working with me at the time who were extremely helpful. The generator design was meant to create the waves in the open sand sea, but the scene that I have used it for so far was at the shore where waves had to break on the rocks. Though it did help somewhat with the rhythm of the waves, a great deal of hand animation had to be done.

Without giving too much away, how will Seed in the Sand extend upon the imagined world of your first feature? Is it true you have envisioned a trilogy of films?

I am backing off from considering these as being a trilogy, but there is a flow from one to the next in the live action portions. There is an element that transforms from beginning to end that is passed to the next film. In Blood Tea and Red String an egg is sent into the animated world and returns to the live action world as a large golden gem. It is that gem that is sent into the animated world of Seed in the Sand by the live action masked woman and it will be transmuted, returning to the live action world as something new at the end that will be useful in the beginning of the third film.

The surreal work of Jan Svankmajer, in particular his film Alice, opened up the world of animation to you. Are there any animators or artists you have recently discovered?

Some artists besides the ever fascinating Jan Svankmajer and Leonora Carrington that interest me lately are Chiharu Shiota, Kirsten Lepore, Allison Schulnik, Miwa Matreyek, Saya Woolfalk, Hans Belmer, Yayoi Kusama, Kiki Smith; and writer Caitlin Kiernan.

In the language of your films, there are certain images and symbols you return to, as if revisiting a dream or a nightmare. One such image is the egg. In the past, you’ve listed your influences to include Leonora Carrington, the surrealist painter, and the egg is often a feature of her paintings. In Carrington’s memoir she wrote ‘The egg is the macrocosm and the microcosm, the dividing line between Great and Small, which makes it impossible to see everything at once’. I wonder how you relate to the egg in your own work and whether it could be emblematic of your creative process as a whole, from conception to the creation of your imaginative worlds.

I see the egg as a protective container in which to grow, change, enter the world or pass from one stage into the next. The surface is smooth and featureless, the interior is a mystery. I hadn’t thought of an egg being emblematic to my process, but one could interpret the intentional isolation needed while working on this film as being inside of the shell of the egg. Much happens, but little is seen by those on the outside. The yolk could be the accumulation of inspiration and research that I feed on to fuel my creation. I could go on free associating metaphor, but I think I’ll stop here for now.

Blood Tea and Red String (Dir. Christiane Cegavske) [Source]

I’ll never say never, but at this point I don’t see myself working in virtual reality on my narrative projects as I want to curate every frame to tell the story in effective cinematic language. Though I have gone from film to digital, the end result remains a collection of still images projected in sequence to imitate life.

Lastly, do you have any advice for an independent animator trying to find their way?

Follow your passion and don’t give up. Hone your skills every day. Find a way to make progress on your project whether you secure funding or not. Don’t wait around for a big grant or investor to start working. It is your passion and perseverance that will serve you best and attract people to help you. There is always something you can do to keep your project moving forward, even if it doesn’t feel like it is enough at the time. Oh, and network, network, network! Make a strong effort to connect with other animators as peers and mentors. It is a small but strong community. Perhaps I have just been lucky, but I have found that animators tend to be really supportive of each other. Volunteer to help with a friend’s project if you can. Invite skilled friends to help you. Seek freelance animation jobs. You learn a lot when working with others. Cultivate connections with people willing to give you truly insightful critique. Be willing to hear the negative along with the positive. And finally, the more you animate, the better you become. Work, work, work.

Production Artwork for Seed in the Sand [Source]

To support Christiane on her second self-produced animation, Seed in the Sand, visit her Patreon here – with your pledge, you will be getting an exclusive, behind the scenes look at production and access to film clips that are for your eyes only.

The post Christiane Cegavske Interview: The Alchemy of Animation appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.