Link: https://youtubeloop.net/watch?v=UhzltFFxrr0
My piece is a short stop-motion animation which explores the theme of depression.
The set is made from hand-painted clay, the figures from pipe clean wires, polystyrene/ styrofoam, wool, buttons and fabric. For the filming I used an Iphone 5s, a 500wt floodlight, and a phot-r photography cube. I used two apps for editing (stop-motion and iMovie) and a video editing software (Premier pro). The process of bringing the animation to life involved intricately setting up each frame and taking a photo. Once all the photos were taken I put them together into a type of slide show to give the illusion of movement. I used 5 frames per second, which gives the film a more jittery, homemade feel- intending to make the viewer unsettled. The animation is 48 seconds long played on a loop. It is displayed on an older looking TV monitor, which stands on a dirtied sheet draped over a black plinth.
The main concepts behind my work are grief and depression. My interest in this generates from a personal standpoint as well as an interest in human psychology. The way that an entire person can be compromised by an illness such as depression, has always fascinated me- and I wanted to portray it in a metaphorical, accessible way.
I began working from my pre-drawn story board; but two scenes in, I just created the next scene that came into my head- which has connotations in itself (e.g. how chaotic depression really is). The animation contains two characters: a little boy and a monster. The monster represents depression; he is always there, and can sometimes even appear to be comforting, but ends up causing the little boy to drown in this blackness. I used the paint as a visual form of sadness, the boy tries to get rid of it but it is a part of him, and eventually he lets it take him. The graveyard was a suggestion that grief is a good place for depression to thrive; the boy represents you and I.
My main influence was the film director Tim Burton. I have always admired his unique and twisted style and wanted to harness this. His stop-motion features are not only visually stunning, but they often explore themes of death and loss in a way that seems innocent; almost juvenile- which was the aim of my piece. For example, The Corpse Bride (2005) portrays the underworld as a vibrant place and the living world as a drab place; this way of exploring the concept of death and loss is much different to that I have seen before and I wanted to incorporate it into my own work. Other artists that influenced my making process include Jan Švankmajer, William Kentridge and Don Hertzfeldt. Another big influence was I miss you, a song by Blink 182. The lyrics to the song have always provoked strange images in my head- images that made a stimulating if not slightly disturbing animation.