You bring the music and I’ll bring the moving pictures…

Popinjay

(The Joy Formidable)

The Popinjay music video was made in collaboration with the band The Joy Formidable. We worked closely developing the narrative and imagery of the animation as well as providing the music.

The style of the animation utilises 2D characters in a 3D environment. Everything is made out of paper, and assembled digitally. This was partly due to the need to create something striking an unique, but also as a way of hinting at a sinister fragility that suited the theme and lyrics of the song itself. The end result is a look that Purple Revolver calls, ‘A lovely visual texture’.

At the time of writing, the video has had over twenty thousand views on youtube and has gained a rating of 4.93 stars. It has also been shown on MTV throughout Europe.

My Black Dog

(The Adventures of Loki)

This animated music video for the song, ‘My Black Dog’ by The Adventures of Loki is based on a mixture of Western and traditional Russian folk tales.

I’d like to say that I spent many hours researching Russian folk tales from original texts and spoken re-tellings. However, the truth is that I found Arthur (Swallows and Amazons) Ransome’s ‘Old Peter’s Russian Tales‘ to be a far more enjoyable resource. I’d highly recommend it both as a faithful re-telling of many of these stories and a very good read in general.

In particular the character of Baba Yaga, a witch with iron teeth, seemed to fit into the themes of the song.

Without any lyrics to go on and just the allusion to depression (Churchill called his depression the ‘Black Dog’ ) in the title, I chose to play with the idea of Red Riding Hood and her Black Dog, the wolf, as a character that both leads her into harms way but also provides the impetus for adventure and redemption.

The video has been widely distributed online and has also been shown on MTV channels in Europe and Japan.

People are Twats

(The Lovely Eggs)

It might be best to skip this one if you are easily offended, obviously.

A collaboration with Lancaster’s finest quirky art rockers, The Lovely Eggs, resulted in this hand-drawn animation.

Taking cues from David Shrigley and outsider art, People are Twats, was made to feel as home-made and quirky as the song it accompanies.

Psychonautic Odyssey

(Aenaon)

Something a little dark and disturbing from the Greek dark metal band Aenaon.

Djerzinski

(Richard Keyworth)

Djerzinski was a collaborative project with the musician Richard Keyworth.

Richard supplied the experimental music, the track Djerzinski, which plays with acoustic and sample based themes. I then created an experimental animation style based entirely on the movement and choreography of 256 straight lines.

The movement of the lines is heavily dictated by the musical score, mirroring changes in tempo and pitch to create a synergy with the music.

The animation is of the lines themselves rather than the images they depict, although the imagery wanders between abstract shapes and more coherent images, particularly of Berlin City.

Fingerprints

(Britt Savage)

Britt Savage, and her band, Twang Deluxe, had me on board this project at the word, ‘Theremin’. They wanted an animation that played with the concept of fingerprints, identity and espionage.

The song itself had a distinctly 60′s Hitchcock feel about it, leading me to study the work of Saul Bass, one of the greatest graphic designers of the 20th Century, and indisputably the finest film title designer of all time.

The result is an animation that plays more like the introduction to an album or a performance than the titles of a film, setting the tone as one of intrigue and mystery.

Fingerprints have been used to replace the facial identity of all of the characters, toying with the idea that as far as the law is concerned, identity is based on the constant provable things about a person, rather than what they do and how they look… two things that can easily be disguised. If this was set in more modern times perhaps the faces would have been replaced by DNA, or ID cards.

And why the koala?

Alongside music videos and animated shorts, I also like to get involved in theatre and performance events. Mostly this takes the form of creating digital sets, animated interludes and promotional materials…

The Good, The God and The Guillotine

(Proto-type Theater)

Coming soon… an innovative, modern opera featuring non-singers and dynamically animated sets. A collaborative piece with Proto-type Theater and the Laptop Ensemble. Stay tuned.

Fortnight

(Proto-type Theater)

Fortnight is about how experience creates meaning; and how a small change in perspective creates a massive change in outlook; a bespoke exploration of where we live and how we go about our daily lives.

Fortnight is powered by Proto-type and will be coming to other cities across the UK in 2011.

Fortnight is a Nuffield NewWorks Commission from Nuffield Theatre Lancaster. Commissioned by Mayfest and Watershed. Fortnight was a 2010 Theatre Sandbox Commission in partnership with the Bristol Old Vic and has been co-commissioned by Contact Theatre. Fortnight has received support from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

My role in all of this? I worked as an animator, creating the promotional video above as well as making short animations and materials from images supplied by the participants… like these:

Two Peas Without a Pod

(Levantes Dance Theatre)

Fluid and vibrant, Two Peas without a Pod explores the essence of partnership and the dynamics of co-dependency and competitiveness. Audiences are taken on an indulgent trip to discover the make-up and contradictions of human connections, observing the draw of coupling, how society’s structures stem from this principle and how varying and fascinating these partnerships can be.

Complicity Simplex

An experimental animation and composition, commissioned by The Slide Show Secret (Eva Zöllner & John Eckhardt)
Music and score by [zygote] (Antti Sakari Saario & Martin Iddon)
and video animation by Adam York Gregory

(Imitating the Dog)

Bar of Lost Souls

(Imitating the Dog)

Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls is a new theatre show and workshop project made as a collaboration between The National Theatre of Greece, Cyprus Theatre Organisation and imitating the dog as part of the British Council Creative Collaboration programme.

Imitating the dog are a UK based company making performance work for national and international touring. Their work experiments with the role of story-telling and narrative in the contemporary theatrical experience, utilising traditional stage and non-traditional digital film and animation techniques.

My role in the production of Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls included the creation of animations and film sequences that were combined with the live action on stage to create a dark and strange world.

The Yorkshire Evening Post described it as:

It’s a rare chance to experience their surreal but gripping approach to performance which blends theatre and cinema to create something which plays with our perceptions and preconceptions. Using animation, projections, unusual stage sets, angles and lighting they create another, darker world.

Also, and unusually for an animator, I followed the production on tour and became involved in the technical development of the play and even went as far as to become involved in the performance through the technology I was using. You’ll soon be able to read all about this in the forthcoming comic, Animating the Dog.

Nutcracker Miniatures

(Live at Lica, Lancashire Sinfonietta)

Part of the Live at Lica performance in 2010. The Nutcracker Miniatures involved workshops in local primary schools to create an animated experience for the performance.

The Section shown here was titled ‘magical sleigh ride’ and depicted the journey to the Sugarplum fairy’s castle.

All the artwork involved was created by the children in the workshops.

Sometimes I don’t need music to animate to. In these cases I end up with an animated short. Most of these are based on my comic The Flowfield Unity, and have been available to see online in such places as the BBC website, as well as in cinemas and on TV.

20 Deaths a Day

20 Deaths a Day is one of three micro-animations based on strips taken from The Flowfield Unity.

With ever shorter attention spans on the internet, the plan was to create a few hand-drawn animations that lasted no longer than a minute each.

As with the comics on which they were based, the animations are available under Creative Commons license. This has enabled people to show them at animation events across the globe and include them on compilation DVDs.

The music accompanying each animation is supplied by the very talented Josh Woodward.

Ugly Things

Ugly Things is another one of the three micro-animations based on strips taken from The Flowfield Unity.

Bedtime Stories

Bedtime Stories is last of the three micro-animations based on strips taken from The Flowfield Unity.

Again, the music accompanying each animation is supplied by the very talented Josh Woodward.

iBleed/Peter 2.0

Here’s a remix of my 2010 Masters project. The original piece was an interactive terminal that invited viewers to partake in a psychoanalysis of a machine, interpreting the images it spewed forth in response to Rorschach test cards. This animation contains many of the responses and is appropriately sound-tracked by some chip tune music (Saskrotch, Warming up & Shutting Down).

A great way to liven up an awards ceremony, corporate event or DVD, animated idents help promote brand identity and add a little glamour to the proceedings.

Vision and Media

The brief was to create a very short animated ident for Vision+Media on behalf of Don’t Panic Projects for their Sound and Vision Conference, held at the Black Dog Ballroom in Manchester.

Vision+Media have their identity nailed down and provided perhaps one of the most comprehensive style guides I have ever seen. Whilst some artists might find this restrictive, I found it refreshingly helpful and made the process of creating a 15 second clip straight-forward and fun.

Hobbycraft

This is the opening sequence for a series of DVD tutorials for the Hobbycraft chain.

Some Comms Awards

The Some Comms Awards celebrate the very best in UK social media and recognise the individuals, companies and organisations who are transforming the use of online to communicate in cool and innovative ways. These playful titles referenced some classic video games using the award logo.

Marketing Society – Northern Awards

The Marketing Society is a not-for-profit organisation owned by its members, with over 2600 senior marketers. Over the past 50 years it has emerged as one of the most influential drivers of marketing in the UK business community.

The pictures don’t move, and you might have to supply your own music, but comics and books are every bit as fascinating to make as animations and music videos.

The Flowfield Unity

(Webcomic and Book)

The Flowfield Unity is a hand-drawn, web and print comic which began in 2005. The strips initially appeared in several UK-based publications such as the Paper Tiger Comix Anthology and The Orphan Leaf Review before debuting in US literary journals such as The Florida Review (vol 30.2, 2005) and the Backwards City Review (vol 2.2, 2006).

Utilising my skills and interests in traditional and digital publishing techniques I have been able to develop a unique method for delivering the comics. They are all available both online and in print under a Creative Commons license, meaning that anyone can print and distribute them. Furthermore, you can visit the site and pick 80 strips out of the 400+ available and I will create a hand-printed, hand-bound and unique book.

The comics themselves deal with themes as diverse as the future, the failure of technology, social dislocation, puns and wordplay.

A review at betapwned stated:

Readily reminiscent of repetitive pop art, The Flowfield Unity is one of my favorite comics. Introspective without being cold, intelligent without being pretentious, this simple black and write strip captivated me immediately…

…Typically rhythmic, sometimes even to the point of rhyming verse, the writing has a ponderous nature. Occasionally the strip runs on highly intellectual puns, more often than not it’s fueled by introspection, memory, and imagination.

Whilst Art Patient said:

The artist captures a moment, sensation or observation that strikes you in a place within yourself that you forgot existed (or never knew.) Those are the kinds of comics you clip from the newspaper and hang on the icebox (a.k.a. fridge.) You never just stick up any old Peanuts comic, you always pick the comic that tells a truth.

The Flowfield Unity is an on-going project and acts as a sketch pad, a reservoir of ideas that informs all of my endeavors. Furthermore, it is a forum and a community, a place where I can interact with my readers and use them as a sounding board for my thoughts.

Love Come Take Me

(A Collaboration with Sean Cousin)

Love Come Take Me is the result of a collaborative exploration between myself and the photographer Sean Cousin.

We explored how the integral nature of a Polaroid photograph can be used as both narrative structure and antagonist for creating an essentially reproducible artefact from singular entities.

A seed of ten original ‘found’ Polaroids were used to create a loose sequential narrative. I then created interlinking drawings which were then interpreted by Sean and reclaimed as 52 distinct Polaroids. The result is a narrative structure that emerged without either of us being responsible for the entire direction.

The drawings themselves were each created in under seven minutes, replicating the length of time that it takes for a Polaroid photograph to develop.

The Polaroids were displayed in sequence at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Preston (2008) alongside the book which depicted the polaroids in a manner reminiscent of a traditional comic. The book also contained innovations in Polaroid representation as each individual object was represented as an integral object, requiring the front and back of the Polroid to be displayed recto and verso.

The Saturday Arts Club podcast was created after we noticed a significant lack of arts-based podcasts covering the performance and visual arts scene in the UK. In an effort to stimulate conversation and promote genuinely interesting and innovative work I get together with my co-host, A_Wes, once a fortnight to record the show that has consistently featured in the ‘noteworthy’ section on iTunes.

It has been described as ‘a bit like the Ricky Gervais show, except with two Karl Pilkingtons’ and more favourably as ‘like Radcliffe and Marconie, all accents and opinions’.

It’s usually quite funny too.