Ellie Chaney, Flipbook Animation

You may remember we had a great morning at Full Of Noises in Barrow, recording a traditional Afghan dance for an animation. Ellie Chaney has been working on this, and we have compiled her drawings as part of our Reverb Sampler project video. The end product will be a Flipbook. The dancers were the nicest bunch of lads you could hope to meet, so thank you to Sartoor Shaman Said (photographer)
Hamidullah Mangal,Abdul Razaq Sagan,Rahim Ullah Jabarkhail, andNoorsalam Arabzai. Hopefully we'll see you in Barrow for the Seahouse show.

Thanks to Linda, Pat and Pete from Furness Refgee Support for the introduction, and Amy at Full Of Noises for the introduction.

Here is a special post from Ellie, describing her methods...the results are beautiful, what you see here is just a taste. And if you want to see more of Ellie's wide ranging practice...here she is...https://www.eleanorchaney.com/

“While I've made lots of animations before, they have always been stop-motion using puppets and I had very little experience making a flipbook or a frame-by-frame cell animation.

Looking at the video John recorded with the dancers, it became clear the first step was to extract the still frames for the 80 pages of the flipbook. After a bit of research it seemed like the best way to do this was to use FFmpeg, which is able to take a small edit of the footage I gave it, and export the frames at even intervals. 

The next step was working out what the drawings should actually look like. This part was definitely more difficult. 

I initially tried drawing the dancers in a few different ways on Procreate using my iPad - using loose sketchy lines, using ink tools to look like images created with a dip pen and using charcoal tools to try making tonal drawings...but nothing really worked.

Feeling a bit stuck, I researched animation techniques to find a more effective approach. I knew I really wanted to capture the sense of movement in the dance, and I could image something that was less linear and more tonal would create an feeling of atmosphere and energy.

This led me to looking at two animators - Caroline Leaf and William Kentridge.

Caroline Leaf is widely recognised for her innovative approaches to animation.

In 'the Owl Who Married A Goose' from 1974, Leaf used sand on using sand on glass creating lightboxes that formed organic, tonal images full of movement and fluidity. https://youtu.be/FbFD-3GCnVI?si=zjADfD2TSBIqGj6Y

Whereas in 'On The Street' from 1976 she used paint on the glass, adding glycerine to watercolour to keep it from drying out so she could move the paint around. https://youtu.be/Xsb29V2ecj4?si=HoF4KAC93XPeaOTx

William Kentridge is also an award winning artist who is well-known for his labour intensive technique of drawing onto large sheets of paper with charcoal, then creating animations by smudging and erasing his work before drawing the next frame on top of this. This creates animations where images emerge from one another with visible marks of the process. https://youtu.be/Xsb29V2ecj4?si=HoF4KAC93XPeaOTx

My main goal with this work was to create a flipbook though, and this project didn't have the time or budget to create something so demanding. However looking at both artists helped me to develop a technique I could use on the iPad to find that sense of movement I was looking for.

The method had to be something I could do in under 30 minutes for each frame (because I needed to make 80!), and it also needed to be accurate so the flipbook and animation would be true to the choreography of the dance, and work at the end when all sense together.

So I ended up creating each image in four stages using Procreate on my iPad.

Step 1 was to import the image on to a black canvas the dimensions of the flipbook.The dancers moved across the page so I also needed to make sure they would fit from start to finish, starting at the far edge of the paper.”

Thanks Ellie

REVERB SAMPLER at the Laurel and Hardy Museum JUNE 25TH

 

REVERB is entering the lead-out groove..., our project  on pop culture, the agency of souvenirs and ephemera is coming tp a close.  First, there's a nice night in the offing at the Laurel and Hardy next week...we will be presenting a video compilation of  animation, performance excerpts, new music, video  and images from the project, including John Rennie's video piece from the Dock Museum show and Jim Alexanders "Song Of David" animation and the marvellous Artfly Jukebox, a kind of audio documentary in a beautifully crafted format.   We'll be previewing the new lathe-cut 45s from me and Shaun,  Alex's pop tribe sculptures and the video versh of Ellie's Dance Flipbook, using video we shot with five Afghan lads last year in Barrow. There should be a book available too, on pop, its products and place, and oooh, allsorts.   

Admission is by a donation to the Ulverston Food project, doors open at 7 so you can sample the museums excellent bar, and we'll be down at about 9 so we can come to the Hope. 

There'll  be another event in Barrow next month, and then we will be following up the responses and spinoffs.....I had a piece in the Radiophrenia festival last year, Shaun's tape release "The Keening" has had an excellent review in Wire mag, and we had an enquiry from the National Museum of Youth Culture about Alex's work and the project in general.

Come and see us on thursday.   

"White Lion / I Want The Lion / White Lion /" etc

    

The first two of Alex Blackmore's Youth Tribes editions, along with a bit of stout packaging in progress.

These figures are really beautiful, 6 inches tall, detail and clobber  dragged from Alex's memory and from photos loaned and uploaded by friends. 

 You'll get a detachable period graffiti'd brick wall, for the figure to glower in front of, and a badge for your Lewis leather or Donkey Jacket.

Ideal for intimidating your Star Wars figures.

Craft Slices. Lathe cut 45s

This is almost unbearably exciting.  2 boxes of Lathe-cut 45s arrived today, the AOIRE single Appyali / Organ Doner, and my Familiar Music EP, which is actually about the length of most singles, but you get four tracks.

If you heard AOIRE at FON in Barrow just before Christmas you'll have an idea of the deepmined intricacies of this music, which is sourced from local band demo tapes, rehearsal cassettes and recordings made by our much loved and missed Ali Rigg, whose home recordings were among the most popular recordings on the Artfly Dock-ola Juke Box during the Play One Of Your Own exhibition. At the same gig you'll have also heard versions of the 4 instrumentals that make up Familiar Music, played on Dulcimers, Guitar and Psaltery. You also hear a Yamaha keyboard and last years Bees in my garden.

The recordings were mastered by Matt Kassel at Seahouse in Barrow, and cut in real time by our friend Ben at Plastidisc. 

https://seahouserecords.com/

https://plastidisc.com/

The quality is marvellous. As is the music, obviously... but Ben and Matt have done us proud here. 

So, now we have to assemble the sleeves and get the records into them. There'll be a launch event, but before that there'll be other news on REVERB.

We'll be back after this short break.

 

Box Fresh: The Teams That Meet In Caffs

 Pieces from the first of 3 editions by Alex Blackmore, The Yoof Culture Collection, perched on their packaging. The Teams That Meet In Caffs, in Donkey Jackets, Dungarees and Wool Caps.  Tea, three sugars, Eggy Bread, NME. 

3D printing by FUSION 3D of Barrow in Furness https://www.facebook.com/p/Fusion-3D-Printing-100085543682492/

info@fusion3dprinting.co.uk

Self-assembly Flatpack.

 These are the sleeves for our lathecut vinyl editions. After a bit of folding and sticking we'll end up with 2 45's, from recordings lovingly mastered by Shaun and Matt Kassel at Barrow's Seahouse Studio. There's also some great footage in the offing from AOIRE/Shaun's FON gig, recorded by Laurence Campbell, associate dust photographer. 

We are Dust Mites / We are Golden.

I've been allowing dust to settle on this LP record for about two and a half years, and today filmmaker / editor Laurence Campbell - who did the video for me and Shaun at FON the other week, and records all their shows - has recorded some marvellous video footage of my pick up-arm ploughing through the dust and of it gathering on the stylus.

An excellent afternoon. Thanks Larry.