Bob Godfrey workshop lecture

This article is based on a workshop lecture given by Bob Godfrey at the Stuttgart Animation Festival. The session opened with a showing of a film from the Rhubarb series. Rhubarb was drawn with magic markers on paper for economy and speed. We made about 30 in all. Today many, many more childrens’ films are … Read more

Graham Clutterbuck – a great entrepreneur

Graham Clutterbuck, founder and managing director of the FilmFair Group of companies, was responsible for bringing many popular animation series to our television screens, including Paddington, The Wombles, The Perishers, Parsley, The Herbs, Simon, Portland Bill, Moschops and The Blunders. This article is based on an interview conducted by David Jefferson. GRAHAM CLUTTERBUCK: I entered … Read more

Jiri Barta and The Pied Piper

Czechoslovakian filmmaker Jiri Barta is at last finding wide recognition of his work outside his own country. Jeremy Clarke telephoned him in Prague. Jiri Barta’s feature length puppet film The Pied Piper is now being distributed in Britain by the BFI. The film illustrates the legend of ‘The Pied Piper’ with a cast including sixteen … Read more

Jiri Barta and The Pied Piper – Page 2

JC: How interesting. I didn’t pick that up. I assumed they were drinking blood, which of course made them worse. JB: No, no, no. When it came to the banquet, it was really wine. Blood came only with the animals – it was really wine. But of course the analogy was intentional, and that is … Read more

Jiri Barta and The Pied Piper – Page 3

JC: What made you decide on making things which were both two and three-dimensional? You mentioned cubism, which is one of the elements which comes to mind watching the film. What made you want to go for that kind of style and look? JB: For the stylization there are two sources of inspiration. One is … Read more

Perspective for Animators

In Part Two George Collin looks at Movement in Perspective. With the coming of pocket calculators there is a danger that children will not learn how to do anything but the easiest calculations for themselves. In the same way, with developments in computer graphics, there is less incentive for animators to plot perspective. But I … Read more