Visiting lecturer Barry Purves

Recently we had a visiting lecturer Barry Purves. He is an English animator, director and screenwriter of puppet animation television and cinema and theatre designer and director, primarily for the Altrincham Garrick Playhouse in Manchester. It was a very beneficial lecture as we went through his work and he explained in detail how the scenes were made and what he wanted to say with it. The first one we analysed was Plume. He talked about how the during the production stages they had to be as efficient as possible, as well as about the doll itself, that it was very expensive and that they used actual swan wings. We also look through Tchaikovsky. 

 I was already aware about who Tchaikovsky was and what work he has produced as I used to have Russian classes. It was very interesting to hear about how it was made he also showed us a bit behind the scenes, the set and he also told us that a group of students got to help out with project. Which made me think it would be cool to help out on this kind of project myself as you get to see how everything is done properly in a professional studio. Another thing we learned was that Barry is a fanatic! It was amazing to see someone so passionate about stop motion animation, he said that if it were up to him, he would animate 50 frames per second, which seemed mad to me (in a good way).

All in all the lecture was very cool, I learned a lot about how professional stop motion animation is made which would be useful if I ever made a stop motion animation myself.