This was the first animation I ever made.
It was produced by Picture This Moving Image before I understood what producing meant.
I should have put myself as Director, but I didn’t know any better.
I was helped by Picture This Moving Image and a training grant from South West Arts, which has since been largely amalgamated into the Arts Council.
Picture This are based in Spike Island, a studio complex/arts centre, and their director Jo Lanyon had seen the sculpture, prints and the fan zine style books I had been making there. She helped me, filling in forms and such like.
We got the grant, despite me telling a lie- I said a shop, which I had once visited in London and liked very much, called ‘Work for the Eye to Do’, was stocking my books. I didn’t realise that Work for the Eye to Do had gone famously bust a couple of years before. It was being sold in Dillons Bookshop on Longacre, that was true- shop staff had some control over stock and I knew someone who worked there.
I was then taught Macromedia Flash 5, which didn’t immediately take in my mind, but I kept fiddling with it at home and a year later I went back to them with ‘Pooky the Giant Shrew’. They entered me into Brief Encounters festival in Bristol and it was featured in the South West section and it made the DepicT! prize shortlist.
I was then taught Macromedia Flash 5, which didn’t immediately take in my mind, but I kept fiddling with it at home and a year later I went back to them with ‘Pooky the Giant Shrew’. They entered me into Brief Encounters festival in Bristol and it was featured in the South West section and it made the DepicT! prize shortlist.
I liked the way Animation was easy to get around, compared to Sculpture, and everyone owned it, compared to prints which are quite a commodity , though I do love the visual richness of print making. My Sculptures tend to be massive and fragile, and I used to spend a year refining each one, putting in layers of detail that no-one would see, so animation was a good discipline for me and the obsessive and laborious nature didn’t put me off, since I was already working that way.
