ANIMATION
During the third year of my BA degree in visual communication, I got the opportunity to study at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon. It was there that I first learnt traditional animation techniques, their approach was to stay away from computers and to practice a more traditional method of capturing what was in front of you with a pencil on layer after layer of tracing paper. It made me see my illustration work in a new way and when I presented my exhibition project at the end of my degree I brought all these new insights and techniques to make my illustrations more immersive by introducing motion and sound. I went on to further specialise in both illustration and animation when I completed my MA in visual communication from the Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts
MA THESIS PROJECT
YOU FILL UP MY SENSES
I knew from the outset that the emotional resonance of this animation hinged on the successful marriage of image and sound. Spring 1, the song that accompanies the animation, is part of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: Recomposed by Max Richter: In this album, he reinterprets Vivaldi’s iconic four-part violin concerto mostly by isolating certain phrases and motifs in the music and extending them or repeating them, giving them new meaning.
There are similarities between the process of distillation of musical structure used by Richter and the simplification and loosening of visual information that my method of rotoscoping gave me. As the director Robert Bresson put it “an old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it'“ this rings true for both the abridged version of reality represented in my hand-traced animation and the work of Max Richter who repeated and emphasised one phrase from Vivaldi’s Spring concerto apart from the rest of the piece, in both processes what is left out is as important as what is included.
BA THESIS PROJECT
NOWHEREVILLE
Inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Nowhereville is a surreal manifestation of the intermediate state between life and death, a liminal realm where time stands still and reality bends. Drawing inspiration from David Lynch, Edward Hopper and journalistic photography, Nowhereville transforms the familiar landscapes of Middle America into unsettling vistas of isolation and existential unease.
I used a physical archive of National Geographic Magazines as the major inspiration for a lot of the quintessential imagery of “Middle America” that forms the core aesthetic of Nowhereville. A common theme for the magazine, particularly in the 1980s, was photo essays describing life in small-town America. I was fascinated by the idea of stitching these disparate snapshots of the American Midwest together and twisting and subverting the virtuous atmosphere of these little towns and I ended up using the homogeneity of the way they looked to unify them into one narrative atmosphere.
Aside from the influence of the otherworldly atmosphere of the director David Lynch, particularly Twin Peaks, the work of the painter Edward Hopper was a major inspiration. Many of Hopper’s paintings focus on anonymous, transitory spaces like diners, petrol stations, hotels and the figures that occupy them seem to be captured in fleeting moments of detachment and anxiety. There is a stillness to his work and the characters in each scene are not relied upon to convey much emotion, instead, the composition and play of light and shadow do all the work of making them seem alienated and alone.
