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Animation Once an animatic is established, it is
simply a matter of filling in the gaps with animation. Hardly a simple matter!
Animation is a long process. 12 drawings add up to 1 second of film. For this
film I to created roughly 10,000 separate images!
I believe that the method in which I create the artwork should be interrelated with the thematic content so I used different artistic styles for each section of the film. In addition to hand-drawn animation, I wanted to investigate creating animation directly in a wilderness environment. Having grown up in a hiking and backpacking family, wilderness has had a profound influence on my artistic approach to beauty. My grandmother is a Plein air watercolor artist and I've always loved being out in the environment and influenced by the elements as I create. A rugged landscape moves me in the same way it moves artists such as Van Gogh, William Wendt and Ansel Adams: I want to be outside and surrounded by it while I create. One of my favorite artists is Andy Goldsworthy, who creates amazing sculptures in nature. I met another artist in New Zealand, Martin Hill, who works in a similar manner, combining transitory sculpture with landscape photography. Andy Goldsworthy
Until recently, animation on location was impractical because of the time and equipment involved in creating and recording hundreds of original drawings. Now, with increasing lightweight digital technology and digital photography, paint and editing programs, the possibility of en plein air animation is within our grasp. Creating animation on location brings the spontaneity of fresh experience to an art form that can be overly methodical in its production.
One sequence I shot on a beach near my home in Devonport. I set up my tripod and a bunch of shells and began moving them around, taking one frame at a time. Animating this way means each frame is destroyed in the process of creating a new one so there is no going back if you make a mistake. Several people gave me some curious glances over the course of the afternoon. At one point a dog wandered over and I thought all was about to be ruined because he was very curious as to what I was doing. After about 4 hours I had 10 seconds of animated shells. It is one of my favorite sequences, not only because it turned out well, but each time I watch it I can remember the smell of Takapuna beach, the sound of the waves mingling with laughing kids, the warm sun on my back and hands balanced by a cool ocean breeze. Even though I spend a lot of time in front of a computer to make my films, it is moments like this that remind me why I do what I do. The New Zealand wilderness was my inspiration and I spent a lot of time out in the bush being inspired. I captured timelapse and pixilation footage with my Nikon D70, as well as still images for the background images. These I combined with digitally painted characters, stop-motion animation and compositing effects. To create a scene I might start with these elements:
And end up with this:
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And
don’t thing the computer does it for me. Though I use Adobe AfterEffects and
Photoshop and Painter 6 to manipulate and combine photographs and drawings, I
end up scrutinizing nearly every frame. 
