Industry Practitioners
Tiny Inventions
What ideas, from their work inspire you?
The inspiration drawn from this video is that they do hybrid animation of 3D and stop-motion animation techniques combining traditional and digital animation. I’m inspired as my future project is like their hybrid which combines two types of animation. I was inspired by their various sets, such as the shops on a winding sloping road and the internal aspect of the shop with so much detail put into their sets.
Are there any methods to their practice you would or already emulating in your own development?
I liked the way their lighting was angled into the window of the shop to give the idea of daytime and yet enough side light to reduce shadow of the characters when filming. I liked the way they immersed their painted static clay figures in their environment to gain perspective before editing in the body movement of 3D.
Was anything surprising from their reflections?
The creator explained it was a long way of doing the animation as they have to double up on everything but it made for a better animation. The stop-motion animators have puppets that have movable joints, hands, legs and head. Whilst, the 3D animators have the same time consuming method that they move and animate the joints, hands, legs and head but do this in 3D rather than stop-motion manipulation. Both methods are time consuming but one has a digital effect and the other has stop-frame animation.
Are there any common issues that affect creative practitioners articulated - and how do you relate to them?
They believe there’s a benefit to both techniques and when you combined them you create something that’s new. Something that doesn’t necessarily conform to oh, this was created in the computer or oh, this was created entirely by hand. It drew from so many different sources and it made something excellent.
Stacey Williams
What ideas from their work inspires you?
The inspiration stems from the fact that she was willing to change direction many, many times for a better paying job, gaining skills along the way and eventually finding the direction. She started her own business of opening a publishing house producing multimedia animation book and yet still wanted to share what she was doing with others.
Are there any methods to their practice you would or already emulating in your own development?
I like the idea of painting a background first and then adding Granddad’s head which is layered over the body shows Granddad snoozing by being tipped forwards and also adding Luigi over the background on a separate layer to Luigi’s body move also.
Was anything surprising from their reflections?
On reflection it was surprising that she allowed outside influences to direct her career. She didn’t give up on a creative job. It was surprising that the aspect of multimedia for the iPad was directed her way, via a previous job of web design, her skills connected with a previous work colleague that thought she was a good fit for an idea the friend had.
Are there any common issues that affect creative practitioners articulated - and how do you relate to them?
The common issues I heard from the Linkedin Video was that people didn’t always have forward thinking about a career path. Some professionals, that she came across, dismissed her chosen career as not having sufficient monetary value in the long term. They exhibited dismissive behaviour about most jobs involving creativity as not valued. She proved them wrong in the end.
Michael Langan
What ideas from their work inspire you?
I was inspired about the stop-motion aspects of it with the use of experimental animation using the pioneers of abstract animation, such abstract animators as: Norman McLaren, Eadweard Muybridge. Also, Michael Langan’s stop-motion films were weird because they were out of the normal format of film making which made them interesting to the mind’s viewpoint.
Are there any methods to their practice you would or already emulating in your own development?
I used stop-motion animation, so yes my development of use of this practice. I have used pixilation in part of my education when i used it in college where I first used this technique at high school, then at college, at the BFI camp and at university where I did box odyssey pixilation.
Was anything surprising from their reflections?
Langan said that when he was at college, he filmed his pixilation and replacement animation which his teachers called weird but luckily they didn’t dissuade him but encouraged him to continue with this type of animation filming.
Are there any common issues that affect creative practitioners articulated - and how do you relate to them?
His creative practitioner ways were so outside the box that people thought his films were weird but sometimes people were inspired by this and liked the oddities, but it depended on how odd the film maker is prepared to go. However, odd may have been interesting to some people because it fitted outside the normal animation.
