In my last post I was looking at really interesting ways of printmaking reflected in animation and how the different style of image making reflected the character and themes of the animation. So what i need to do now is look at ways of me personally finding a visual style and way of image making that can visually represent Ian Leslie’s talk in a way that I feel most appropriate.
I spoke about my concerns with Rachel about finding a visual style that is individual but reflects the animation clearly, in an original engaging way. She recommended me this video by Len Lye called ‘Swinging The Lambeth Walk’:
This reminds me again of my printmaking work and the capabilities of it being able to reflect music with simple gestures an colours, without needing a direct visual link but a suggestion, whether a line or dot. even though I’m not working with music I think it still hold a similar method to ways of expression the words or perhaps even tone of voice? or the speed in which he explains things? This has all given me great ideas about other ways of visually representing the audio. I found out that the film is actually owned by the British Film Council, and their brief bio on the film states that the lines and dots represent different instruments. This shows a much deeper thought process between the image making, where as before I had a fairly shallow view of the imagery. This style of imagery reflecting music has been done for centuries and reminds me of Kandisky’s working a few decades before in the 20th century. Another video artists working a year or two before the releases of ‘Swinging the Lambeth walk’, this was Oskar Fishenger with the short film An Optical Poem, 1938, who was a celebrated German-born abstract film-maker. It’s entirety, composed to Franz Liszt’s “2nd Hungarian Rhapsody.” Made entirely with paper in stop motion fashion.
again this si an incredibly similar method of working and I like how natural and organically it reflects the music, the audio fits seamlessly. This is exactly something I want to emulate in my own work, even though I’m using a voice, I could use shapes and gestures to represent either the rhythm of his voice or reflect the content. perhaps I could still even use my research on Bantje’s to mix the two processes to create my own individual creative style.
For now I want to look as the gestures of shapes and their visual representation , but I want to step away from the ink style of animation for a while and first clarify the imagery I want to create, whether its then created with ink after I not. I need to figure out my own visual language that will suit the content and tone of Ian Leslie’s words.
Samantha Cowell / Illustration year 3 