I've been extraordinarily busy lately getting back on track.
The animation is now almost ready for exhibition, although I have a slight issue with the timing that I will check up on tomorrow.

The animation will be exhibited as part of Alice In Disneyland exhibition at Lincoln Central Library - see flyer for details.
We held a mini version recently at The Terrace, Lincoln, which went very well indeed - all information and feedback is available here: http://sites.google.com/site/lincolnartistnetwork/projects

Once the exhibition at the library is finished, I plan to make another animation for this competition http://a-ha.com/news/articles/20257/ to be exhibited at a gig near me :-)

I finally went in on Friday to have a short tutorial for After Effects, so that I know how to put the animation together in different software to what I'm used to.
It's much better being able to use the University imacs than my old mac that won't do anything that I want it to!
And the animation is fairly straightforward (fingers crossed!) I've just been busy organising all the files and checking everything.

I'm going away over Easter (shh! Don't tell the kids!) - a free holiday to the Isle Of Wight courtesy The Young Victoria to visit Albert Cottage Hotel and Osbourne House for a real royal treat! I've been looking forward to this since January, and it'll be good to go and see whether Queen Victoria really was a non-prude as we're now being told. "With all these nudes around, she must've been fairly confident about her body" I seem to remember an ad saying. No more than say, Prince Albert I'd guess....
Do men suddenly need empowerment projected onto them the minute they step inside the Cistine Chapel, with all those male nudes around? Somehow I don't think so. But there is a stupid myth around that the Victorians were "prudes". Usually propagated by the sex industry for no good reason at all. Obviously, The Young Victoria challenges that notion, as it should.

For Mother's Day, Brett contributed some pocket money towards Natasha Walters "Living Dolls: The Return Of Sexism", so feminist issues have been on my mind again. Not that this will be addressed overtly in my work.

LAN members are wishing to hold a small exhibition at The Terrace upon my return. I really don't have time to organise this myself, as it's too short notice, and I have enough to do. So I'm leaving it up to them to organise.

Dispute with Odeon

We were all preparing for the upcoming exhibition, and I was panicking because I hadn't got any where near the animation studio to create the actual animation, and we only had a couple of weeks left to create work. So I booked youngest son into Kids Club for half term, but couldn't get in to do any work because I didn't receive any reply from the animation dept...
then son was ill.
Also, this didn't bother me as much as the fact that the Odeon decided they weren't going to show Alice In Wonderland due to a dispute with Disney over the DVD release.
So the exhibition, and subsequently my modus operandi for working, were all ruined. I sank into despair.
Then I had a phonecall to say that Alice In Wonderland was on again, but by then I was utterly fed up and through discussions with LAN colleagues, they all agreed that they weren't happy with the way Odeon handled this.
But they were keen to continue to exhibit the work they've made. So we're planning a new Alice In Wonderland exhibition, with Lincoln Central Library booked for May and potential to exhibit elsewhere.
This has given me time to re-apply for a new ACE grant, and I don't mind the extra time this allows to work on the animation.
I hope to get in tomorrow to work out times to go in and start creating this from next week.



Here is what Jean Baudrillard has to say about Disneyland:

a simulation of the third order:

"Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America that is Disneyland.
.... Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order of the simulation."

"The imaginary of Disneyland is neither true or false, it is a deterrence machine set up in order to make us believe that adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that true childishness is everywhere - that it is the adults themselves who come here to act the child in order to foster illusions as to their real childishness."

"Disneyland: a space of the regeneration of the imaginary as waste-treatment plants are elsewhere, and even here.
Everywhere today one must recycle waste, and the dreams, the phantasms, the historical, the fairylike, legendary imaginary of children and adults is a waste product, the first great toxic excrement of a hyperreal civilisation."

Excerpts from Simulacra And Simulations

This image is an experiment for the "set" version - am toying with whether to include the sequence where Morten's hand appears, but not sure if this would require too much work at this stage. I have built a 30cm square "set" which needs finishing touches and is still in development.





Mirror Nijinsky Sequence



Preliminary sketches - rabbit character development.



White Rabbit sequence "down the rabbit hole" - simple animation sequence where the rabbit shrinks (relates to Drink Me).



An early doodle

Alice In Wonderland animation work

I've not blogged for a while, work for Alice has been sidetracked by other things, admin for the LAN, an A-ha gig / exhibition in November, the LAN Christmas Market, then a whole series of unfortunate events occurred. Some financial difficulties were only compounded by the sudden death of my father just before Christmas 2009. However the exhibition is ongoing and is now picking up momentum, I have work in sketchbook, and need to start the animation now my ideas have finalised into something definitive. The A-ha gig in November provided some intriguing research material. It took place on Nov 4th, the same date as when Through The Looking Glass is set.
Having read "Alice In Wonderland" on the tube and worked in my sketchbook on the journey to London, editing rabbits into the Take On me video, this became the central concept, cemented by the fact that 2010 is A-ha's final tour.
I also came across a rabbit sculpture near The Mall galleries, which I have since discovered was by Barry Flanagan. In particular, his "Mirror Nijinsky" sculptures seemed to me to evoke the White Rabbit in The Matrix, and also a metaphor for Tweedledum and Tweedledee.



"Mirror Nijinsky" - Barry Flanagan



Below you can see how I adapted the sculpture to become the White Rabbit character for my animation - the White Rabbit has a kung fu element of Neo in the Matrix - I like that dynamic.



The animation is constructed of four frames. Each frame will have a different simple animation in, with re-appropriated imagery from the Take On Me video. I'm waiting to find out whether I can access a projector to display the animation in the cinema space. I plan to make a 3D "set" version of a scene from the animation to exhibit. For this, I'm interested in the scene when Morten's hand appears out of the comic and the girl is drawn into the comic world - that relates directly to Alice In Wonderland, when she goes down the rabbit hole.
I do plan to make these available as DVDs and upload onto Youtube, but ideally want to project the animation onto the 3D "set" or onto the wall.
Each animation sequence will be very simple animation - for one sequence, it will be the two rabbits in a "bullet time" motion, where the camera pans around the TOM frames.

Alice In Wonderland exhibition

As well as being an artist, an illustrator and a lone parent, I've set up the Lincoln Artist's Network as a group for graduate talent and artists in Lincoln, funded by a bursary via Enterprise Inc at Sparkhouse Studios.

The LAN has been slow to get going, partly due to delays with the Summer Holidays and funding, but we exhibited work for the Summer Gala alongside my own Lady Of Shalott work, and we're now working on an Alice In Wonderland themed exhibition to exhibit in collaboration with Lincoln Odeon for the release of the Tim Burton film in March 2010.

I am in the process of creating a proposal for new work for this, work which will draw from the Lady Of Shalott, and will no doubt involve animating dolls.

I've been accepted onto the AA2A scheme at University, which means I can access facilities such as using the imacs and Flash for animation, sewing machines, and I receive a small payment to cover materials and/or childcare.

It will enable the LAN to have a continued presence at Greestone again, although I do attend the artist's talks at The Collection which are organised for lectures anyway ;-)