Tom Mortimer of 12foot6 on Animation
"Did you have a mentor when you were starting out?
I worked with some great illustrators when i started. We shared a building with the Central Illustration Agency and so met and listened to a few of them. Brian Grimwood, Simon Spilsbury, Robert Shadbolt, Geoff Grandfield. At the time illustration was being battered a bit because everything was going digital. But as we always say - good art will always find a way.
What's your process for writing a treatment?
We like to try new things whenever we can, so it's about getting the idea and pushing to see what we can do with it. And we like to get something drawn or made or modelled quite quickly. One piece of art will always inspire you to the next step we find.
Do you often collaborate in the early stages or do you work alone?
There are 20 of us at 12foot6 and we all do slightly different things, so everyone has to rely on everyone else - all we ever do is collaborate.
Pencil & Paper or iPad ?
it's a bit hard to send an email with a pencil and pen. But i know what you mean. We find there is a pretty simple rule in animation, in fact with any work I think - you get out what you put in. Put good art in and you stand a good chance of coming out with something you'll be happy with. Use whatever tools you like, as long as it works."
(Millie Ross, 13.07.2012, Jotta)
[The Animation/Illustration agency 12foot6 was started by Dave Anderson and Tom Mortimer. Their name was derived from their collective heights i.e. (6 foot 3) * 2]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Medieval manuscript illustrations were planned not doodled
"it's the word 'doodle' that really riles my pedantic dander. ... because, as I try to make clear, the images I post ... weren't scribbled into the margins by surreptitious snarkers whilst no one was looking. They were explicitly commissioned by the manuscript's patrons as part of the project from the very beginning. For the well-heeled noble, ordering a book was not just a matter of selecting the text; deciding on size, presentation, illustration, and ratio of naked dudes to non-naked dudes in the margins was all part of the process of getting a book made.
This is not to say that medieval readers and scribes didn't ever doodle. It's just easy to tell the difference between images planned as part of the manuscript's commission and those scribbled in by a creative, bored scribe or one of the later owners of the manuscript. Just as you might imagine, a reader might decide a chunk of text was particularly important and make a note in the margin ... Or, someone might just decide a page looked too blank and thus attempt to fill up some of that space [1]... See, the thing about medieval doodles is they look just like modern doodles ...
For this page [2], somebody sat down and sketched out a rough draft, showed it to somebody else, possibly even multiple somebodies. There were meetings. Consultants were brought in. The client was consulted. And at some point somebody said, 'Yes, that's very nice, the nuns smuggling that dude into their nunnery. Very topical. But I don't like that blanket. Too drab. Can we get someone to put some flowers on it? The difference is, I hope, clear. You don’t doodle in gold leaf."
(Carl Pyrdum, 13 February 2012, Got Medieval)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
New Zealand National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library
"We're in Beta, and we're excited to share this new National Library website with you. Why are we so excited? For the first time you can search right across our collections in one place. It's easier to get what you're after and easier to use it."
(The Aotearoa New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua)
Fig.1 Ref: 1/2-220232-F, Portrait of girl with fan, 1968, photographed by K E Niven & Co of Wellington.
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CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Search The British Newspaper Archive online
"The British Library and online publisher brightsolid today launch a website that will transform the way that people use historical newspapers to find out about the past. The British Newspaper Archive website will offer access to up to 4 million fully searchable pages, featuring more than 200 newspaper titles from every part of the UK and Ireland. The newspapers - which mainly date from the 19th century, but which include runs dating back to the first half of the 18th century - cover every aspect of local, regional and national news."
(The British Library and brightsolid, 29/11/2011)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
