As part of a second-year collaborative project at Cardiff School of Art and Design, I worked in a cross-disciplinary group to create an abstract animation set to a piece of music specially composed for us by Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama graduate, Dan Soley. Each group was assigned a different section of the composition, with the challenge of translating it visually without using any recognisable forms. As the Animator, my role was to take the designs provided by my teammates, bring them to life through animation, and edit the sequence to align seamlessly with the rhythm and dynamics of the music. I also introduced my teammates to stop-motion animation techniques, running sessions in the studio to help them contribute animated elements to the piece. Many of our visual motifs were developed through workshops where we experimented with making marks directly onto reels of film and creating collages for projection slides, which were then incorporated into the final animation. To inform my approach, I researched comparable works such as Mary Ellen Bute’s Tarantella, which explores the interplay of colour and shape in response to sound. This project not only strengthened my technical skills in animation and editing, but also gave me valuable experience in teaching, experimentation, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Music by Dan Soley - All That Glitterz