About

Modelmaking & Tuition: Sarah Bridgland
Modelmaking: The people of Sleaford, UK
Animation (and I made a leaf): Luke Whittaker
Music: Forget-me-not (edit) by Floex. https://soundcloud.com/floex

On Saturday, Sarah Bridgland and I went to the National Centre for Craft and Design to run a paper and animation workshop. Sarah has helped out making some of the sets for Lumino City, and as an artist makes intricate paper sculptures, sometimes resembling flowers in bloom. The NCCD, which is a converted seed factory, wanted to create an animation based on seeds and growth, so it was a good fit and a great opportunity to work with Sarah again.

She brought all sorts of paper, books and magazine to cut up, and we got the participants creating all sorts of different flowers and leaves in a multitude of colours.

We rigged up some lights to bring out the three dimensional quality of them, and took photographs from above, which we then transferred to computer and into Flash. I took them and created an animation where they burst from a seed, bloom into a riot of summer, and then get carried away in a flurry of leaves. Using a bit of my baby-coding skills, I made it different on each cycle, so it constantly grows unique flowers.

It was a really enjoyable workshop and a great collaborative effort – they produced some beautiful models, and in the case of Oscar the nine year old, monsters. He was a big fan of Moshi Monsters, so the fact that I designed IGGY went down well. His mum was about to make him an IGGY backpack.

The video will be played at the Zygote Festival in October.