Hauntings from the Studio

Hello Void People!

Welcome to Hauntings from the Studio! A new branch of this Substack which will document the things I’m making and messing around with each month. It’ll be a bit like an open discussion and exploration of my sketchbook and office - with bits of animation, paintings, drawings, collected things and research material. So let’s begin!

I make most of my work here in my home office space. I know it doesn’t look very haunted and thus doesn’t fit perfectly with the name Hauntings from the Studio, but imagine it with spider webs and a gothic soundtrack and it will set the mood. I work both digitally and with analogue mediums, so this office space switches depending on whether I’m painting + making or doing computery things. This office has served me well, but my longterm plan is to convert my cellar into a more messy animation studio space that is a bit friendlier for oil paint and making mess. But for now, this is where the magic happens.

Last month, I was lucky to be part of Cycles and Sequences - an exhibition of expanded animation work from the course research team at Farnham Animation. As I’ve discussed in previous posts, I’ve been in a bit of a creative desert these past few years for a variety of reasons and so this exhibition became a chance to refine some recent experiments and get my creative life rolling again. The results can be seen below - a series of uncanny animated things inspired by Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest creatures, alongside a set of charcoal drawings exploring similar themes. This work was initially a response to Phil Gomm’s always spectacular The KickAbout.

This latest addition to my Strandbeest collection can be seen below. A sea of teeth, what is not to love.

And here are the previous experiments that helped form this collection of work.

Finally, some of the charcoal drawings. The photos here are a bit rough as I took these before the work was framed, but hopefully you get the idea. I can’t express enough how much I love compressed charcoal as a medium - it produces a wonderfully dark and matt surface that draws you in.

None of this work is what I would call a major step forward, but it is helping me rehab my fatigued creative muscles and it has been really fun to get back into the flow of things.

Whether I’m making abstract work or narrative film, I somehow always come back to the imagery of the unheimlich. I think partly, my ideas around this are simply an attempt to find connections between beauty and disgust. There is something hugely evocative about watching things that at once seemed haunting, now seem mesmeric or calming. And vice versa, taking things that seem conventionally beautiful, and discovering the rot within.

Another thing I’ve been pissing around with this month is 3D scanning real objects. This process allows you to photograph and scan real world objects so that they can be used in a digital space. I’d done a bit of this a few years ago when I made this test animation thing…

It involved scanning in some handmade moquettes that I had produced with balsa wood and cardboard, and then using them to construct an environment within CG.

I really loved the process and so I’ve been wanting to give it another go, this time using higher resolution photos and the free software Reality Scan as a testing ground. At some point, I’ll do a Youtube video about this process and take this further, but for now, just know that taking hundreds of photographs of a lemon whilst swigging a beer and marvelling at the super detailed digital recreation is actually a great way to spend a Wednesday afternoon. 10/10, would recommend. Some test images below.

And last but not least, a few photos from a recent visit to this year’s Summer Exhibition. The great thing about the summer exhibition is that, whether the show is good / bad / average, there is just a ton of stuff to see. It isn’t mind blowing, but it’s a vibe and a good way to see the summer in. And so although I wasn’t massively blown over this year, where else are you going to see a pickle The Scream next to a Tracy Emin or Norman Ackroyd.

That’s all from me for now. I’ll be back soon with more thoughts and more arty things to share, but until then, goooooooodbyyyyyyyeeeeeee.