I am an artist and a visual storyteller. I love creating site specific atmospheric animation and trying to capture the sense or feel of those places. My film “Glimmer” is a 2D digitally animated film about the joys of creativity and drawing. The project is a love letter to my creative process and to observational drawing. A lot of my inspiration for storytelling comes from watching the world around me and documenting it through drawing. I have found that it helps me feel connected to and excited by the world around me and to see the world in a more playful way. It is easy to lose sight of the everyday magic of the world. A glimmer is the opposite of a trigger, it is something that sparks joy and a sense of calm.

It was difficult to translate my thoughts and ideas into a narrative that made sense and conveyed my ideas without being too explicit about what I meant. I didn’t want to use dialogue and wanted the story to have a clear plot, but to be open to interpretation. I overcame this through a lot of trial and error in the storyboarding and idea generation stages and by sharing my ideas and getting feedback from others throughout the process.

Most of the project was drawn digitally and I had to stick to deadlines to get everything done in 4 months. I had limited experience of the software that I was using and was learning how to use it as I made the film, but this meant that I had to make things work and adapt how I was planning on making the film, simplifying some of my initial ideas and using the soundscape and colour to convey some of the more complicated changes and ideas.

I did a lot of the initial drawings physically and did a series of observational drawings around the city, collecting inspiration. Because so much of the project was digital and was done on a computer in the dark animation room, heading out to do on location drawing and to be playful and messy with physical materials helped to keep me inspired and fed into the ideas which the film is about.

I am a maker ; I love working with my hands, I love the process of drawing, of creating and designing. I need to make and to draw and to document. It is part of how I experience the world and how I understand it. I love stories and visual media such as comics, posters and animation. I wanted to study design so that I could improve my physical making skills, but also my understanding of how visual communication works and how it can be used to convey complex ideas.

I have just finished a residency in Portugal exploring the character of the town of Castelo Branco through watercolour and ink animation and I would love the opportunity to create more work about specific places, exploring their history, heritage and culture. I also love reportage illustration – drawing live events as they take place and would love to combine the two practices to document events and stories as they take place. I am hoping to work for a small studio and have the time to work both on their projects and to have the time to continue making my own work and telling my own stories.