Izzy Milenkovic MA Character Animation

I had the pleasure yesterday of going to the LIAF screening of ‘Figures in focus: Wanderlust’ – a programme focussed around the under-representation of female and non-binary animators and their stories within the independent animation sector. This screening was devised and hosted by Abigail Addison who has previously come as a visiting lecturer to our course at CSM and spoke with us about the animation industry and different career paths. Attending this screening was a really beneficial experience as not only was there a screen talk with three of the filmmakers as part of the screening, but there was also a meet up of ‘She Drew That’ – the organisation started by Hannah Lau-Walker that focuses on the promotion, support, and development of women in the UK animation industry. We met before the screening in a nearby pub where we could talk with other women in animation and some of the filmmakers themselves. 

This, and other ‘She Drew That’ meet-ups like it have been a really helpful tool in not only allowing me to meet other animators and make connections, but importantly, gain a broader understanding of the many different roles and career paths that you can take within animation. It can also be very reassuring to meet older and more experienced animators and get some reassurance that the industry isn’t always as scary as it can seem as a student or new graduate. At this meet up I connected with MACA alumni Sophya Kebets and we spoke about what she has been up to since graduating from the course, which was a really helpful insight into what my life may look like after graduation. I got to speak to several animators, the majority of whom were currently working freelance which was interesting to hear about, particularly getting an understanding of the many different ways that it’s possible to find freelance animation job opportunities. I also spoke to an animator called Miranda Peyton Jones who had recently worked for 3 months in Berlin at a studio called Studio Monströös. The studio sounded really interesting as she explained that it’s a small studio founded by 7 team members, 6 of whom are women. Their business model sounds interesting as they balance working on commercial projects with working on their own personal projects, with all members of the team collaborating on each other’s projects. This concept of a smaller and more community-focused studio set-up really appeals to me as an alternative to the more corporate animation studios that you often see. I think that if I were to design an ‘ideal studio’ to work in or create, it would be one that has a community focus and that feels supportive and collaborative.

One of the main things that I am realising as I do more research into the animation industry, as well as different studios and commercial animation frameworks, is that a lot of my favourite animation and many of the animators that I most admire actually work outside of commercial animation studios as independent animators. Coming to realise that there are ways to live as an animator and create your own art, without necessarily having to work for an animation studio I find very refreshing and also reassuring. 

I found that attending the 2024 British Showcase screening at LIAF really exemplified this for me. There was a contribution from Blinkink – a commercial animation studio, but there were also films made by independent artist animators who either found funding through grants or other means, or who otherwise earn their living doing something else and animate on the side. I was lucky enough to know firsthand two of the filmmakers who were screening which also was really helpful in gaining an insight into the different practices of filmmakers. One of these filmmakers being our course leader Shaun Clarke, I know that Shaun’s film ‘And Then They’ was at least partially funded through Arts Council England funding. It is helpful to be able to see for myself examples of filmmakers getting films made through many different avenues. It’s also really helpful to have a reminder that making films can be one part of many different aspects that might make up my future career, and that I may find that I prefer a similar work model to animators like Shaun who may have several jobs at any time and balance making films with other roles such as teaching. 

A friend of mine, Harry also had his film screening in the British showcase, which gives me a really important insight into how filmmakers who are of a similar age and point in their career to me are working and what ways they find to earn a living whilst creating animation. Harry generally makes his films through either applying for grant funding, or simply working on these projects in his own time, whilst primarily making his living with other jobs, such as working as a freelance photographer and videographer. This enables him to be able to create his own films and work completely independently, making exactly what he wants to make. This freedom and independence really appeals to me, though I know there are also challenges to working in this way, such as often having to be entirely self-reliant, not having access to the resources and equipment that a large and well funded projects have, and also often lack of stability in your work and income if you’re working freelance from job to job. 

One role that interests me within the animation industry is working as an animation director for different studios or clients on a freelance basis. This is primarily how the directors on projects for studios such as Blinkink work, so being able to visit the studio in September was really useful. Visiting Blinkink for an introductory talk and tour was also very helpful in gaining some understanding of how an animation studio handles different projects in many different animation mediums. The mediums that are and have been used in Blinkink projects include mixed-media, stop-motion, puppetry, 2d digital, and 3D animation. It was also interesting to hear first-hand from Ben Lole – a producer and head of animation at Blinkink – who gave our talk, that Blinkink in particular looks for new and interesting mediums to work in that may have not been used in commercial projects before, which I found an exciting prospect. This is something that really appeals to me, and as I do more research into different animation studios and the practices of different animators, I am finding that something I value very highly is the ability and opportunity to work across different mediums.

I was curious about how Blinkink works with and hires directors and when I asked Ben he mentioned that they usually only work with directors on a freelance basis and they are hired in for specific projects. Although there are also many directors that they have long-standing relationships with, who they informally consider their ‘house team’. For this reason I think that if I were to consider what my ‘ideal role’ would be within a commercial animation studio like Blinkink, it would probably be as one of these freelance directors that may have a long-standing relationship with the studio but comes in on a project by project basis. In an ideal scenario this would allow me the freedom to work on projects that I’m passionate about and have the skillset for, whilst not being tied down to a specific studio and beholden to whatever projects that come in. That being said, working as a freelance animation director obviously comes with a lot of uncertainty and has its own challenges, such as having to be incredibly self-reliant and always needing to be looking for the next project, and having to essentially work as your own manager and PR to promote yourself and negotiate jobs, contracts and rates.

In our talks at Blinkink they mentioned that with time and money being so tight on projects, there’s really no room for mistakes or improvisation in their projects. They have to meticulously plan exactly how everything for an animation will be constructed and shot, and once shooting begins they don’t have any room to mess up a day of shooting and start again. Although I absolutely understand the need for this approach when shooting on limited time and money, I think I would find this kind of environment quite constrictive and would find it hard to feel completely creatively fulfilled working in this methodology, as it leaves very little room for creative experimentation. 

For this blog post on Practice based research I will be focusing on the Puppet-animation work that I have been doing and the techniques I have been honing and learning on the Stop-motion pathway class led by Haemin Ko.

Puppet Making

Puppet-making with wire armatures was something that I had some previous experience of so I went in already feeling fairly confident about the techniques we would be using, but I also found that I gained some really important knowledge from being able to consult experienced animators including Joseph Wallace, who was leading the puppet making workshop, as well as recent CSM graduate Maria Lourenço.

We began the workshop by designing puppet characters that we planned to make with quick sketches that would inform our puppet-making.

I learned some new techniques in puppet fabrication from Joseph that I hadn’t utilised previously. One of these is the technique of using pieces of shaped balsa wood to create sections of a puppet that can essentially function as a pelvis, ribcage, skull or other structural element. I found this really useful going forward as the puppet that I created ended up being on a larger scale than I had ever worked on before, adding these balsa wood elements to the armature provided a lot more structural integrity to the puppet which allowed me to position and animate the puppet more easily once we had moved on to the animation phase.

A new skill that I learned in this workshop was felting, something that I had never used in puppet-making before. I wanted my puppet character, which is a bear-like creature, to have a hair or fur covering to it’s skin. Previously I would have achieved this using fabric and sewing some kind of covering, but Maria encourage me to try felting directly onto my puppet and I think that the result is much more realistic and gives a much better effect. I also really enjoyed the process of felting and would definitely like to do more of this technique for future puppet projects.

I did run into some challenges as I was making my puppet. One of these was that quite late in the process I had a small disaster and my puppet’s “spine”, the twisted wire portion of the armature that made up my puppet’s back, snapped in half from too much wear. This was a particular challenge as I had to re-open the felt and foam that made up my puppet’s flesh to get to the wire armature and fix it. Maria and Ko were able to help and give me advice on how to fix this section by drilling a new hole in the pelvis and using epoxy glue to re-attach the spine.

This setback taught me that in the future it would be better to use thicker wire, or more strands of wire, which would mean the section could stand more movement without wearing out. I could also possibly make this section easily replaceable if I was worried about this being a problem, although in this area of the puppet this might not be realistic. Replaceable sections are more often used for hands, feet or heads of puppets as these can be changed quickly and easily is parts break or wear out.

Overall I found that I learned a great deal throughout this process. I found that these workshops and experiments taught me not only new practical skills and knowledge, but also helped me realise what areas of animation I am interested and what I enjoy as an artist and filmmaker. I think moving forward I would definitely like to take time to focus more on puppet-animation and especially gain some more experience in a wide variety of puppet-making techniques.

These are photos and a video from the process of animating with my puppet. I would love to talk more about the animation process itself but have unfortunately am over my word count. 

In this blog post I will focus on my research into the history and theory animation as pertains to Eadweard Muybridge, one of the earliest pioneers of animation.

My original interest in researching Eadweard Muybridge came from quite an unusual direction. Since September I have been working on a project with Lysander Wong where we have been on a mission to create knitted animation. This project was sparked by a shared interest in knitting and textiles, as well as animating with unconventional materials.

For the project we used arguably Muybridge’s most famous photo sequence as a reference for our own animation. This is the very famous sequence of a horse running. This reference was perfect to help us create a clear movement sequence for our project, and also made me interested in researching Muybridge further.

MUYBRIDGE

In my research into Muybridge I found the text At the Edge of Sight : Photography and the Unseen by Shawn Michelle Smith, which I found to be a really invaluable resource.

It was from this text that I found out that Muybridge’s work in photographing movement first started at the request of a racehorse breeder, Leland Stanford, who wanted to understand the gait of his horses, so he could improve their performance at the track.

It is this desire to understand movement and break down what can’t normally be perceived by the human eye which incapsulated Muybridge’s motion studies. They are a sort of demystifying of something that at the time was an unknown, which from a modern perspective is hard to comprehend.

As Smith writes: “They enable one to perceive elements in the visual field that generally pass before the eye unnoticed, making one aware of invisible worlds and ordinary blindness.”

To achieve this feat Muybridge had a design and pioneer an entirely new method of photography. He created a track of up to 36 cameras, in groups of 12, spaced evenly apart. The cameras also had to be positioned at different angles so movements could be recorded from all sides.

I hadn’t considered before just how arduous this entire process would have been when you factor in the traditional manual photography processes of the time.

Once the photos were taken the process then began of making negatives, printing cyanotype proofs, selecting negatives for enlargement, and then printing these photo sequences. Not to mention re-photographing and making collotype printing plates so that images could be transferred to paper as prints.

“Muybridge presented his human motion studies under the collective title Animal Locomotion in 1887, and the final publication included 781 plates (562 of human subjects) assembled from 19,347 single negatives.” – Smith

Cultural Context and Racism

In my research I also found it very important to learn more about how Muybridge and his work were directly involved with and linked to white-supremacy and eugenicist movements of the time period.

Espeth Brown notes that to William Pepper, who was a member of Muybridge’s advisory committee: “the development of the white, male student body was directly linked to white racial progress.”

Smith notes that as “Elite athletes photographed at the height of their youth and health, Muybridge’s male models represent the “champions” of the [white] race”

I think it’s very important to remember the cultural context tied to artist and figures that we study, and to be informed about these facets of historical artefacts, so as to not white-wash or misrepresent them as divorced from their very real histories of colonialism, and white-supremacy.

Sources:

Smith, Shawn Michelle. At the Edge of Sight : Photography and the Unseen, Duke University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=1603733.

Brown, Elspeth. “Racialising the Virile Body: Eadweard Muybridge’s Locomotion Studies 1883– 1887.” Gender and History 17, no. 3 (November 2005): 627– 56.

More photographs from the process of me and Lysander’s knitted animation project.

For the simulated work experience I was assigned to help the second year students: Mingzhu Jing, Zoe Wang, and Chris Lou, with their grad film project which is a puppet stop-motion short film.

I was really pleased to be assigned this group as the nature of their film, and the fact that they are doing puppet stop motion fits really well with my interests. Puppet stop motion is one of my favourite mediums to work in and the felted style of puppets that their group are using in particiular I find really interesting and fun to work in.

I firt met up with the group in the theatre back stage workshop where they were already well underway making puppets. The group gave me an introduction to their film and the concept for the project. The style of the film and puppets reminded me very much of Anna Mantzaris’ work, and she was clearly a big inspiration to the project. I was struck by the workload and it served as a reminder of what a big undertaking my grad film/project will be next year and how much focus I will need to put into organisation and planning ahead.

Design

The first task that my group of 2nd years asked me to complete for my simulated work experience was drawing a turnaround of one of the characters in the film. They gave me an original drawing of the character to work from and asked me to draw the rest of the turnaround based on this original drawing.

I found this process both easier and more challenging than I had expected in different ways. The process of drawing itself I didn’t find too difficult or arduous, once I was in the flow of drawing it wasn’t too complicated to figure out how to draw the character at different angles. The part that I found more challenging was having to draw someone else’s character and make decisions about how to draw them using my best judgement.

I tried my best to preserve the important aspects of the design they sent me and keep the character true to model and vibe, as well as the style, of the original.

Fabrication

Once I finished drawing the character turnaround, I was able to help with some some practical making.

I helped with the making of the puppets, making armatures, adding foam to the armatures, and wrapping the puppet bodies with foam tape. This was an enjoyable process and I was able to put to use some of the skills that I had practiced in the puppet-making workshop with Joseph Wallace earlier in the year.

I also mentioned to my group that I had some experience in making clothes for puppets, through sewing, crochet, and knitting. They then asked me to help with making clothes, including this small jumper that I crocheted, for the same character that I drew the turnaround of.

Overall my Take-Away from this project is a higher level of awareness when it comes to how much work can be required for the making of grad-films. I think I’m more aware, ahead of next year, that it is a very big undertaking and I need to be very prepared when it comes to plans and scheduling. Working with a group also helped me to realise that working in a group to create my grad film could be a really good idea as it creates a wider-spread of labour and allows you to share expertise.