…. Well… Shit…
I’ve neglected this blog for around two months and I think now a new post is long overdue. I forgot this thing even existed. My last proper contribution is a post on Anifest that I started working on at the beginning of March, and it’s still in draft form, unfinished and gathering dust.
I think it goes without saying that the world is in a real sorry state and nothing really makes a lot of sense anymore. I’ve been suffering from a long phase of depression that just seems to keep going. It would be easy for me to blame it on Covid 19, quarantine and lockdown, but I think it goes deeper than that. I’m not having to make a three hour journey to London every day, but yet I still feel trapped and emotionally drained. I am at least pleased that doing classes from my bedroom is refreshing and means that I don’t have to wake up at six in the morning. But working for others is difficult. I don’t get people. I don’t like them. I don’t understand them.
I have to admit that my reasons for being an animator and artist in general are purely selfish. I saw animation as a protest against the world. A way of me having control over something and not having to deal with real people and real scenarios. I wanted to make things purely for my enjoyment, not for others. I don’t really care about appeasing audiences or appealing to them. I see animation as an escape from a world that’s always been particularly cruel and hostile, much in the same way I see the forests and lakes as an escape from humans. I understand animation. I understand nature. But I will never understand people, nor will they ever understand me.
That’s ultimately why I’m having some trouble with this Children’s Society commission. It’s not that I don’t have an idea – the idea is in my head and partly in animatic form. But having to communicate certain ideas to other people is hell for me, because most of the time I just can’t explain things and it gives me anxiety to do so knowing that they won’t take well to it. I hate being like this sometimes. I hate that I have to speak a certain language and do things one way just so that everyone will ‘get it’, even though I know they won’t and will only get angry with me.
The basic idea in writing is a slow truck into a multiplane, black and white surreal landscape before things blur and fade into ‘another dimension’ – I want a hand-drawn sequence for this, on ones, straight ahead. I don’t really know exactly what will happen other than shapes will morph into one another and everything will be very dreamlike. To storyboard and plan exactly what will happen is to miss the point and take the fun out of it – I want to animate my own stream of consciousness and play things by ear and improvise. Having to draw storyboards for that sequence and having to follow them exactly without the opportunity to experiment would be too restrictive. I can very much see why Richard Williams didn’t care for storyboards back when he worked on The Thief and the Cobbler. But the industry sadly didn’t care for him. He spoke his own language and nobody really understood it. I can relate to that.
I know what my idea is. I know how it will play out, and when it’s done, it should look impressive and I should be proud of it, unlike a lot of the things I work on. But everybody wants to know before I’ve even done it. Me knowing by myself and having it in my head isn’t enough, because I feel like I’m not being trusted here and just left to my own devices.
I don’t know whether I’ll ever be sucessful if this is the case. We’re all forced into a world where we have to, or are at least prodded and coerced, into working and talking to others, and communicating verbally. I almost dread to think of how society would treat a character like Tack – a character that almost never talks and communicates only through body language. Just look at how we treat nonhuman animals and the mute. Differences and deviation from the norm is punished and not tolerated. I don’t speak the same language as everybody else and everybody expects me to do so. I would never survive a boardroom meeting or anything else that requires talking or working on behalf of others. Most of the time I just want to be alone away from the insanities of modern life. I envsion a future where I could just live in a cottage in the woods making art and films by myself and not having to bend to the whims of executives or worrying about money. But money is king in this world and it’s treated like oxygen – nobody can really live without it.
I don’t want to end this post on a depressing chord, so here are some cute cobblers.
