Episode 15 'Stoke your Fires'

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I was lucky enough to get my hands on some free tickets for this years Stoke Your Fires at the Pottery museum in Stoke-on-Trent. I was only able to attend one day, however, it was the Tribute to British Animation event and gave us a real treat in various presentations with speakers such as Barry Purves, Vivien Halas and Tony Dalton.






Tony Dalton, film historian and curator of the Ray Harryhausen Foundation

It was pretty spectacular to not only watch a slideshow on Ray Harryhausen and be reminded of his legendary status, but to get up close and see one of the Skeletons used in his animations was just gobsmacking (Tony Dalton wasn't sure if it was from Jason or Sinbad... but who cares, it's a Harryhausen armature!). For obvious reasons we couldn't pick it up and unfortunately I only had my phone camera to take a shot... so the quality is a bit blurred (I was kicking myself for not bringing my digital camera).

The other photo above is of the models made from last year, under the theme of the animated film Robots. My assigned Robot was the character Fender and it was quite an experience to see this model put on display in the art museum of Stoke.

It was also a great feeling to sit with Barry Purves in the cafe. We do see him every week for his project, but for him to seek you out and sit talking about opera, amongst all these other animators/enthusiasts, was really cool. His semenar on his passion for puppets was very enlightening and as always gave us all more inspiration to crack on with our own work.

First look of one of the sets for my own animation 'I am Your Father'


Comments

  1. Unknown6 March 2011 at 20:25

    Did you make that set? What is it made of? :) I like.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ashley Lightfoot7 March 2011 at 13:04

    Looks very good Tom. The guitar is especially good after having a play with it earlier :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tommy Grainger10 March 2011 at 07:17

    thankyou :) its only very basic for now... foam board walls (and bed!)and the floor needs doing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Laura Weston Art11 March 2011 at 05:50

    Hi tom enjoyed reading the post about stoke your fires cause i coulnt make it in - the ray harryhausen lecture sounded like a treat!

    ReplyDelete

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