This month me and a friend of mine volunteered for a week at Animated Exeter - run by animator Susannah Shaw.
We had an amazing time, helping out with workshops, interviewing people and talking to people and working with some amazing people!
I was lucky enough to work with Forkbeard Fantasy, a great experience. They were projecting onto Exeter Cathedral with a piece called 'Evolumental'

We also did their 'Crossing The Celluloid Divide' workshop, which is a technique I have blogged about previously.

Here is a video of how we got on.

Brilliantly I also caught some of Ed Jobling's explanation of how it's done, so hopefully I will be able to start using this technique once I get my hands on a projector!

I also caught the under 18's awards, which were really inspiring! I'm starting a film project with a youth group soon and this one video has really got me thinking of ways we can make it fun and interesting for the kids! I love how it mixes most types of animation - 2d, 3d stop motion and pixelation.

Wall:mation POV by Suited & Booted Studios

Highlights from Forkbeard Fantasy's latest show: an hilarious comedy about the Art World. New dates for Autumn 2010

A couple of great examples of 'Crossing the Celluloid Divide' using film , projection and animation.

This is defiantly something I want to work on, I just wish I felt I could do it alone. I'm not sure anyone else would be interested in trying something so out of our comfort zone. 

A pioneering british theatre company who, since the 1970s have specialised in mixing live performance, puppetry, moving image and animation.
'The idea of Forkbeard Fantasy came in the early 1970s with three brothers - Simon, Chris and Tim Britton. Simon was a painter and maker of kinetic mechanical sculptures; Chris, fascinated by experimental and physical theatre, devised constructions and gadgetry to perform within; and Tim, a poet, writer and cartoonist, could see how his imaginative world might be realized in live performance.' 


During the 80s they began to use a techniques 'Crossing the Celluloid where actors on the stage would walk into the film and back out.

'Who Shot The Camera Man' 1986The Brittonionis first became seriously entangled in one of their movies during the Murder Mystery Thriller “Who Shot the Cameraman?” An intruder in a Parka anorak inexplicably enters a sequence of action in the film. To everyone’s astonishment Chrissy sticks his head into the film, then steps fully in and chases the intruder off into the distance.
Performers can move –from stage to screen and back again… and performers in film or on stage communicate and talk with one another across this Celluloid Divide.

In GHOSTS (1985) the use of projection and film was used to give the illusion of a man coming from a distance and then crashing through a door onto the set. By projecting the scene of him walking upto the window (just film projected onto a sheet from behind) and then coming through the door next to it, you've got the illusion that the character has come from the outside and not from behind the stage.
A tiny picture appears showing a man approaching down a hillside towards what is obviously a window. He eventually peers in and can’t see inside, steps back, and then crashes in through the door. A flap crashes down over the window and there is total darkness. 


CLICK HERE FOR FORBEARDFANTASY DOT CO DOT UK