Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin are highly renowned for their classic children's animations for the BBC, including Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine and The Clangers.
I've never really been appealed to drawn animation (especially NOT computer generated); for me, there is just something much more exciting and magical about stop-motion animation using puppets and objects to tell a story.
Smallfilms did just this, they made creatures and brought them to life for children to watch on the television. Postgate and Firmin have had a very successful career making short videos of their incredibly small worlds.
I wanted to study Smallfilms because they are world builders,
and world building is what I want to do (in this particular project and within my art in general).
1960's/70's stop-motion animations have so much charm. It's in the Queen's English narrations, the music-box soundtracks and the entirely handmade scenes. Everything about them holds nostalgia (because they are old and classic, or as my mum would say, 'they have whiskers') but these videos are also other-worldly, so much more believable than a drawing. The physicality of the props, the real motion that the videos entail have young audiences believing that those little creatures are actually alive.
The scenes are constructed as stages rather than just flat pages for a screen and the depth of a real environment gives the illusion of a world that has been built by the hands of the creator. Stop-motion animation and puppets seem more personal because they are real characters that can be touched, not just drawings that are flat and lifeless.
My interest in puppetry and animation is quite obvious in the work I produce, often preferring to CREATE than to simply DRAW. For my picture book, for example, I have already begun to construct a 3D landscape of How Hill wood and Herleshow. I am not Oliver Postgate or Peter Firmin and I do not have the talent of Smallfilms, but I would like to use similar methods of image-making to achieve a handmade, authentic aesthetic.
POGLES' WOOD
This children's series from Smallfilms has quickly become my favourite.
I only discovered this lesser-known Smallfilms production when watching Bagpuss on Youtube (lame Jay, real lame!). Although I hold a strong affection for Bagpuss the memorable saggy cloth cat, the Pogles family exist in their own beautifully crafted miniature wood which I find so enchanting and whimsical. I want to live there.
Pogles' wood is exactly what I am aiming for in constructing my own landscape.
Postgate and Firmin's creations have a low-fi feel, mainly because they worked with a very small budget. It appears even more low-fi when watched today as we are bombarded with super high quality digital production in contrast to this handmade quality.
They used real turf to make the scenes, along with junk and mechanics for the models. This ehtos of recycling and making do with what you have is similar to my own approach to creation - using junk to make something new.
THERE'S A BOOK ABOUT SMALLFILMS IN THE LIBRARY!
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