Barry Purves Part 2 - London International Animation Festival

Soon after having him visit my uni to talk to us about how to use animation to tell a story, two classmates and I travelled to London at the start of December to see Barry Purves as a guest speaker at the London International Animation Festival!

This time he spoke of his career and compared different aspects of the animation industry to each other. For example he talked about working on children's films, and how there are a lot of rules to follow and keep within the boundaries of compared to standard adult films. This is due to the health and safety precautions we have to teach children, since they are at a young age and easier influenced by what they see.

However Purves believes that children are smarter then we give them credit for, and we should give them the chance to understand rather than talking down to them (aka being patronising). He also believes it's important to introduce kids to culture.

His favourite area of the industry is working on films - he worked with Weta on King Kong for a short time and thought it was "wonderful", but unfortunately he didn't get to finish on that project. Another project he had a short time working on is 'Mars Attacks', which was originally supposed to be a stop motion film, but changed at the last minute to CG due to budget cuts.

Apart from these experiences, he hasn't had much experience in the film industry, because he has never been asked. He believes this is where he will thrive and show his true potential to the world - so I'm looking forward to that when it finally happens! One film he was sad to miss out on working on is 'Fantastic Mr Fox'.

In between these conversations were some screenings of his best films, and newest one 'Plume', including 'Screenplay', 'Achilles', and 'Tchaikovsky' - All of which demonstrate a good storytelling element, since that's Purves' main interest.

Overall the night was an enjoyable one; hearing Purves speak twice within the same week felt a little repetitive at times, but an inspirational visit that has helped me a lot with COP 3.

Barry Purves Part 1 - Visiting the Leeds College of Art

A couple of weeks ago, we have the privilege of meeting Barry Purves, a famous stop motion animator, as he came into our uni to give us a talk about his experiences in the industry! With 37 years under his belt I think it's safe to say he knows his stuff.

Despite this he originally wanted to be an actor; after not doing so well in this field he realised that animation has a similar effect as acting does, in the sense of giving a performance. Purves creates all of his films with the performance of the characters primarily in mind, to create life within the puppets

He opts to animate with puppets because it's a very hands-on technique, which allows him to use props and materials to build a character, and to really be able to feel the character as if it were alive for real. He also believes that stop motion is the best way to get the audience to relate to the film, since this technique uses real materials that people can actually hold, therefore making it more amazing to see it moving on screen as if it were alive.

During the presentation was a screening for two of his films, 'Plume' and 'Tchaikovsky', in which he took us through scene-by-scene to describe why he used certain camera angles or random facts about details in the films.

Overall it was a very insightful talk about various aspects of the animation industry, and he was a pleasure to listen to.

Plume

Tchaikovsky