and now back to reality

after a busy, fairly tiring but fun christmas and new year break i'm now back in manchester.
my schedule during the holidays has meant my work has been somewhat limited but i have found a few items to possibly use in my animation. i've found charity shops have been the best source for things to use and i found in my local oxfam a scary china clown that turned out to be a teapot.
i have still been thinking about what to do for my animation and i'm torn between a few ideas but in the next few weeks i'll have the time to experiment and try to eventually learn how to use computer animation software properly.

over new years i was in rotterdam in the netherlands for a taize meeting. taize is a community in france and each year they have a european meeting over new year in a different city around the continent. each year thousands of young people accend on a european city, this year there were around 25,000. i loved the fact there were so many people especially in the prayers with all the people singing together. i like the idea of so many people being unique and individual but coming together to make something new.
after the meeting i stayed with a friend in groningen which is in the north east of the country. it is a university town and still has lots of the original architecture (only a small section was bombed during the war). it is quite a pictureesque town especially along the canal where my friend lives where there are all the old warehouses that have been converted into houses.
whilst in groningen we also climbed the martinitoren (martini tower) which is one of the oldest towers in the town. despite being slightly scared of spiral staircases i managed to get to the top and get down again.

because of being involved in the taize coomunity i have friends from all over the world. whilst seeing a lot of my friends in rotterdam i thought i could show about the journeys people made to get to rotterdam or the journeys i have had and will have seeing them in their own countries. this is still early ideas that are forming but i wanted to do something to bring together the exerience i had in rotterdam.

lastly, a few days ago i watched an animation of peter and the wolf directd by suzie templeton and a short film called cashback directed my sean ellis.
i loved the animation style in peter and the wolf and the lack of speech in it made it much more beautiful and made it have a dream like quality. the whole 'look' of the film is very cold and dark but that doesn't stop there being beauty in it. i especially loved the ice skating scene and the animation here.
cashback is about an art student who works the night shift in sainsburys to pay for his course. to make the time go faster he imagines time has stopped and he can imagine what he wants. in parts this film was enjoyable and funny but i think more could have been done with the main character stopping time. in the film he stops time, undresses female customers and draws them, i think i would have enjoyed the film if he had stopped time then made something funny happen. the rest of the film is funny and entertaining but it completely changes when he stops time which spoils it slightly.

so these next few weeks will be ones for experimenting and hopefully having a finished animation at the end!