[New post] Collaborating with David, part 2: Beowulf
Clive Hicks-Jenkins posted: " Clive: David, you were undertaking trial digital work for me while I was working on the illustrations for Beowulf. I made them in black ink on white board, but had it in mind to see how they'd look when inverted to white on bl" Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog:
Clive: David, you were undertaking trial digital work for me while I was working on the illustrations for Beowulf. I made them in black ink on white board, but had it in mind to see how they'd look when inverted to white on black. What you produced provided me with inverted images of drawings and digital colourings of them throughout all the stages of the book's creation. Although the final additions of colour were done at Folio Society, you did all the preliminary 'tests' that enabled me to make the decisions ready to brief the Folio team.
Above: detail of illustration from the book after image inversion and digital colouring by Folio Society.
Below: original ink artwork on mountboard with pencil trim guide, before inversion and colouring.
David: Oh it was such a joy to have a private viewing of your Beowulf drawings, and because I was messing around with them digitally, I could easily produce many different versions. It was fascinating wasn't it, that some worked instantly as inverted images, while others were more powerful as you'd drawn them?
Above: finished ink drawings piling up on the artist's desk.
Clive: In the end we included some drawings as made and some inverted. The combination worked well.
David: I made some red versions which were just OK, but I remember layering a deep spot-lit blue-green with the image for the first time, and it pulsed and sang immediately. But I think you had committed to the blue at that point, and the intensely saturated blue-on-black and black-on-blue that their production manager achieved in print for your full-bleed double-page illustrations, is way beyond anything I've ever seen in print. I've done a lot of printmaking through the years, but how they achieved that glowing deepest blue that is beyond me. It pulses with some sort of other life and is just unforgettable. I know that you were blown away by the book when you saw it.
Clive: I couldn't stop shaking when I received and opened my copy. I was anxious because I knew by this point the edition was printed, bound and boxed, and there could be no turning back. I'd seen many page proofs over the months, but between the last proof seen and the finished book the production manager had worked miracles. I was simply speechless when I saw the the quality of the printing.
Because of your contributions at preliminary stages, and because you knew the illustrations inside out, it was inevitable that at some point we'd start talking about the potential of the images to be animated into life, and that's exactly the direction things then went.
David: Well of course, what a gift this was! Your drawings for Beowulf were in a paper-cut style, and so ready-made for shadow theatre puppetry. I'd learned to animate a while back when we'd made an animated film to promote the Design for Today Beauty and BeastToy Theatre. With that experience under my belt, how difficult could it be to create a three or four second animation as a test run for a potential Beowulf book-trailer? I have to say that it was BLOODY difficult. I'm pretty sure that the learning curve was so steep that at more than one point my neuron's firing registered on Google Earth. But anyway, this idea of a moment of animation rather snowballed didn't it?
Above: articulated paper maquette made as a compositional aid during the early stages of planning the book.
Clive: Indeed!
David: Most of your preparatory work for illustration projects is built upon the idea of the jointed maquette, so animation is a perfect fit. You've long experience of making maquette and model-based animations for your stage productions of Hansel and Gretel and The Soldiers Tale. But while the images of Beowulf were exciting to imagine unshackled and animated into life, perfectly suited to the medium in terms of design, this was digital as opposed to analogue animation, and we were placing more demands on ourselves, upping the game considerably.
Clive: Because we felt animation sequences could enhance the promotional video Folio would be sure to make to launch the book, I decided to ask them whether they might permit us to submit a couple of trial animation sequences by way of introducing the team to the idea. Luckily they were open to that and you began work almost immediately.
I recall conversations we had about the 'character' of the animation, degrading the imagery to make it look almost like 'found footage' with that sense of vintage film scratchiness and fluttering. You might have different recollections to me, but among references we discussed there was the idea to animate the dragon almost as if it were some kind of nematode worm be filmed on a glass slide under a microscope. I think I may have mentioned the title sequence for the film Seven to you, with its sense of flickering unease. And then of course there was our shared passion for Smallfilms and the work of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. It's just not possible to be in a world of Norsemen without having a conversation about Noggin the Nog.
David: Ah yes! The David Fincher/Smallfilms mash up. I loved your suggestion of a squirming dragon as a micro-organism under magnification. It adds an edge of discomfort to see inserts of a different texture, speed and animation style within piece. I used the same concept in the jerking movements of the wolf and the tentacles whenever they appear.
Above: black original ink drawing and the digital translation to colour in the book.
David: Tonal changes are essential to my mind, especially when piece is very dark, or heavily stylised. The most incredible imagery in a movie can actually become dull after a while, unless the viewer is shaken out of it - like a little hit of spice. I watched versions of scenes of the Beowulf animation without the degrading filters we wanted to use. It was quite startling when your drawings started moving across the screen, so it was quite tough to have to dull them down. I could have taken things even further, but instead settled for scratchy inclusions of scrabbling colour instead, to make the films glow and dull in turn. The decision to grime the piece up worked wonders in unifying the film sections, which had to flit between dramatic action and pages of the book itself. After all this wasn't a movie title sequence, but all about the beautiful book. God knows I had to keep repeating that to myself as I worked. Hitchcock forever tries to creep in doesn't he?
Clive: Once the two brief sample sequences had been delivered to the Folio team, we waited with bated breath. When the responses came they were wholeheartedly enthusiastic. Far from being asked to produce a few short cuts to be edited into a promotional film, were were briefed to produce the whole shebang. After a first Zoom with the team at Folio we got working on 2 x 30 second films, one at a format for viewing on smart-phones, and a second for viewing on laptops and tablets..
David: Oh weren't they wonderful? They said just go for it, which showed such faith in us. I did feel confident about how it would turn out. Working with illustrations so carefully considered and masterfully rendered I knew the results would look just beautiful. Like cooking with the best ingredients. Though we'd agreed two thirty second films, when completed they each came in at one minute and six seconds. Could have easily hit the five minute mark frankly, but I think just over the minute stands up very well.
Clive: I agree. 30 seconds would have been too rushed. As they stand at just over a minute, they fly by.
As with all our animation projects, once we'd discussed how to proceed I absented myself to concentrate on sourcing the music. You in the meantime were off like a rocket again. I remember your utter confidence that you knew where to go with all this, waiting only on the music to provide the structure to the films. And moreover not just animator on the project working to my brief. You were now Animation Producer!
David: And a very cocky one at that, in no small part because of your confidence and enthusiasm in allowing someone to hack up and reconfigure your work.
While you researched the music I got busy anatomising your Beowulf characters and assembling a cache of puppet elements, confident that you always show an astonishing faith in me to infill the drawings when I amputate an arm, head or leg or need to find additional fingers or a neck. I in turn feel safe in the knowledge that you always find the perfect piece of music to make the pace, depth and rhythm of the story appear unquestionably clearly in my head. This time, you sourced four tracks, one of which although amazing we both felt might be a little too disturbing. (Maybe another time for another film.) I viewed the films hundreds of times as I worked on them and since completion, and I'm confident the two music pieces we settled on had just the right aesthetic, power, pace and primal drama. Eminently listenable, and no aspirins required.
Above: animated book-trailer for the new Folio Society edition of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.
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