In the previous term, while researching for Abi Feijó’s work, cutout animation was one of the types of animation that caught my eye. Even more so, when I was introduced to Lotte Reiniger, Yuri Norstein or by Chinese cutout animations in Cynthia’s presentation, like Wan Guchan’s work and the “Calabash Brothers”
Personally I grew up watching “Angela Anaconda”, so it’s a type of motion that I’m used to and that I genuinely find nostalgic. I really enjoy how much detail there can be in a frame of a cutout animation and how you can play with texture, layering and depth. You can literally preserve the original drawings and artwork and use those to animate. From LIAF, I was really inspired by “Half of an Apple” from Xiaolin Zhou.
For that reason, I decided to challenge myself and animate a raccoon for the “Quadruped Walk” exercise. My intention was to take the expression “Pearls for Pigs” almost literally, but having a raccoon picking up a pearl bracelet, instead of a pig, showing how even animals are naturally attracted to shiny beautiful things, even if they can’t understand its worth. Thanks to my background as a pattern cutter, the concept of drawing and cutting pieces of paper that overlay each other, wasn’t necessarily new to me. For the raccoon’s movement, I used as a reference the two sequences of photos from Eadweard Muybridge, since they showed it not only walking, but also running and turning, which was convenient to play with depth.
The biggest challenge for me initially was to create a background hat could enhance the depth of the shot, and more importantly that would be movable. I decided to play with the camera for this exercise and have the raccoon get in the frame, and as soon as he gets to the centre, the camera chases him until the end of his walk, staying still for the last shot, where the raccoon turns and leaves the shot. I decided to cut the sky in the same width as the shot, as it doesn’t move, whereas the fence and the floor move alongside the raccoon. I used the garden of the house I’m living in at the moment, in Walthamstow, which I thought it could be nice to record it or document it while I’m here.
I’m quite happy with the end result, even though there are clearly things that I can improve on. I have to be careful with the background next time, and make sure it hasn’t moved after I have animated the characters. I would also like to work with laser cutting printers and mix different textures and materials. I have to figure out a better way than blu tack to stick the pieces of paper together, as it made the animation much more challenging than I anticipated.