Mx.D.P

I’ve just finished the visual drawings for this animation and put them into the edit suite. There are 103, but you can bet that number will change by next week!… I’ve put in some mind-numbing hours with 2 am finishes all week, as once I am on a roll, I have to keep going, or I will lose the feel for the characters.

I have a strange animation process; in one way, it’s a bit like a film storyboard. The whole thing is really a Contemporary Dada storyboard for my practice!

I bang in a rough set of drawings into the edit to get a feel for the flow of the story. Then, I revisit characters, layer details on top of the original drawings and put them back into the edit timeline, often swapping them around for the story’s sake.

This is wasteful in commercial animation terms when time is money, but I see it more as painting a picture of a story…

Some drawings are never used, and for every frame you see, I have probably drawn it several times until it’s just as I like it.

I sometimes make shorter little films away from the main edit timeline for special effects or to muck about with speeds and transitions. I don’t like to do that within the main edit because I feel it spoils my flow, and I’m finding with each new film I make; I do more and more sections that way.

Will I eventually storyboard the storyboard and prep the characters before the main draw? Maybe, but I think that may take away their charm.

It was 1974, and I was nine years old when I first saw the cartoon of a Green dog called Roobarb and a pink cat called Custard. In their first episode, Roobarb invented a cunning plan to fly like the birds…. Roobarb flying! Even though he came a cropper, I was all over that! I always tried to ‘fly’ off any structure I could find! And that’s the point: you get the message’s ethos and pay attention because the humour entertains you… yes, I know springs and cardboard wings may not work, but that didn’t stop me from trying…

I’m talking about the Beef and dairy industry in my latest work. It’s buggering up the planet, producing methane gas, a more damaging greenhouse gas than all the co2 cars emit worldwide, it takes vast portions of the world’s land mass, and it is responsible for the deforestation and destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, which are the lungs of the word. It’s using up the freshwater supply of the planet, and if it continues, it will kill us all… no one wants to hear that! We all love the cheeseboard, and I am from Yorkshire, so roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is a cultural heritage… but reality has to be faced, and what better way to do that than with the extraordinarily vulgar and dirty humour of Mx. Hu- Cow Farm, and their ‘Titty milk dairy rebellion’.

(Mx is the honorific title non-binary people often like to use but are rarely offered the option; I am delighted when I am!) Mx Recruiter is recruiting for the Mx Farm. They end up joining the farm as a Hu-Cow.

The other characters are Terry, the Sperm Collector and Bully – she is a Transgender Bull… yes literally tits on a bull.

I won’t spoil the story…

Next week, I will finish the script and record the voices, sounds and edit the music.