RCA14 Animation

I went to see the extremely impressive RCA 2014 animation show over the weekend. Below are the trailers (or snippets) of some of my particular favourites. Outstanding work!

Inkee Wang

Marcus Armitage

Nicolas Menard

Loop Ring Chop Drink — Trailer (2014) from Nicolas Ménard on Vimeo.

OCDF 2013 trailer by Simon Ball

OC2013 Trailer H264 1920X1080 1 from MyStreet Films on Vimeo.

Open City Docs Fest 2013 brought to life by the very talented Simon Ball.

The Joe Grace Series trailer

I made this animated trailer for the "Joe Grace" series by Peter Wilben (Orchard Wall Publishing). Music: Quinn McCarthy & Tom Fahy.

The first ebook in the series "Red Contract" is now available on amazon.

Green Economy and Sustainable Development

I was approached by Stinging Hornet Films to create some animations for use in a documentary about the green economy commissioned by UNRISD. You can view the film here.

Inspiring Animation

I've seen a lot of amazing animation over the past few days which I thought I'd share.



This is a sand animation by Caroline Leaf which is featured in the Watch me Move exhibition at the Barbican gallery. It's astonishing to think that this was entirely created by drawing with sand on a lightbox. The exhibition is beautifully designed and well worth a visit.



There is a lot of interesting things happening at the folly for a flyover in Hackney Wick over the summer. This weird and wonderful animation The Centaurs' (1921) by Winsor McCay was shown alongside a selection of other early animations.

And finally I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 1 recently and was really impressed by the beautiful animation sequence of the The Tale of the Three Brothers. The animation was directed by Ben Hibon who produced it in association with framestore. Check it out for yourself here

Open City animation by Craig Murray

THE LONDON DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL IDENT (2011) from Craig Murray on Vimeo.

My illustrations for the Open City Documentary have been brought to life by the animator Craig Murray. I think the hand-made, cut out quality of the animation fit very nicely with the illustrations. Amazingly, he made the whole thing using an A4 scanner!

PES

Silhouettes and Shadows

I find myself drawn to silhouette imagery. I've been watching lots of Lotte Reiniger's cut-paper stop motion animations recently. The images above are from her 1922 animation of the classic fairy tale "Cinderella". I've become a big fan of hers since I saw a screening of 'The adventures of Prince Achmed" in the Barbican a couple of years ago. It's astonishing to think this was made over 80 years ago. It still looks so fresh and inventive. The visual economy imposed by this form of animation accentuates the charm and elegance of her figures.

The shadow's and silhouettes in Reiniger's work reminded me of the Shadow Catchers Exhibition I saw last month at the V&A. Floris Neusüss' life sized photograms were my personal highlight from the show. His figures are ethereal beings which inhabit a dream world somewhere between waking and sleeping. There are so many wonderful textures in these images with some areas of the figure appearing pin sharp whilst other parts are corrupted and abraded.

Physical Apps

I thought this was a really charming piece of animation by a group of second year BA design students at Goldsmiths - Henry Flitton, Harriet McDougall, Chris Thomas and Ben Redford. They've physically illustrated the virtual applications of Twitter, Facebook and Spotify.

Physical Apps. from Harriet McDougall on Vimeo.

Showreel

After navigating the choppy waters of Final Cut Pro over the past couple of weeks I'm pleased to have completed my showreel. It's a mixture of mostly recent work made in AfterEffects and Flash. The music is Boards of Canada 'An eagle in your mind'.

Spinning Tongues exhibition

My animation 'neCessITY, capaCITY, toxiCITY' will be shown alongside a host of other films and video art pieces as part of an exhibition entitled 'Spinning Tongues'. The exhibition is organised by Rotareliefs and takes place from 11th - 16th October at the Vibe Bar on Brick Lane. Here's a little bit about the event: 

"Derived from the formal idea of ‘multidisciplinary’, the work commissioned by Rotoreliefs has the objective of creating a platform for the exchange of the different languages that exist between disciplines and cultures, with the aim of enriching all of the arts by means of the influence and exchange of each with the others. It is not just a question of promoting one discipline with artists from one country, but rather to create a network of connections between other cultures and disciplines to encourage, enrich and fuel art in all of its senses."

The video arts, films and live performances will take place at the Vibe Bar on Brick Lane on Sunday October 11th from 11am to 5pm with the gallery exhibition taking place until October 16th. The opening day event will cost 5 pounds and 80% of the earnings from the door will go to the artists.

neCessITY, capaCITY, toxiCITY

neCessITY, capaCITY, toxiCITY from Aine Cassidy on Vimeo.

Rotascoping fun!

I've been working solidly over the past few weeks on a moving image piece for my final MA show in July. I've been working in AfterEffects which was a new software for me so the initial learning curve was more of a learning vertical! It took me a while to get my head around the concept of the 'z' space, the third dimension as it were. I've gotten a handle on it now and it's all coming together. Now that I've got the basic structure and movement of the animation I've been investigating ways of adding detail and interest by introducing other techniques. The animation is primarily illustrated but I'm keen to overlay elements of video into the piece. When I'm mixing media in this way it's important that two elements gel together and there isn't an obvious clash. I used rotascoping to better integrate the video into the illustrated environment. I found this process extremely time consuming and rather tedious. It involved exporting the 12 seconds of video as a film strip at 15 frames per second. This essentially created a stop motion animation (of 180 frames) in photoshop which were each drawn over individually. I was surprised i didn't have repetitive strain after it! This image is a section of the film strip. Despite the labour intensiveness it was useful technique to learn for future reference. 

Man-made landscapes

This is a scene from the project I'm working on at the moment for my final show. Throughout this year I've been working on ideas about man-made landscapes and and exploring the human imprint on the natural environment. I've been keen to bring these landscapes to life through animation and have recently started using After Effects to achieve this. I'm really enjoying the process though it is a steep learning curve. 

Upscaling

I find my work is getting larger and larger as the MA continues. This is image is a current work in progress. The actual size is approx 180 x 42 cm but I can envision this growing some more! I recently made some screen prints on the largest bed in the print studio so now I'm tempted to make something really massive. I want to create a continuous landscape/cityscape using printed and hand made techniques, and use digital animation techniques to unfold some sort of narrative within the panorama.

Thomas hicks

Gravenhurst - I turn my face to the forest floor from Thomas Hicks on Vimeo.

I intend to bring a animation into my work and my friend Lizzie suggested I take a look at Thomas Hicks.

I really like his work. I love the scratchy lines and jerky movements and the way he uses monotone to create a sort of sinister atmosphere. See more of his inspiring work here.