First attempts at poetry animation

My interest in animation is to explore how to use animation in the context of poetry. How well they complement each other, and how well animation can be used as a backdrop in a performance context. This is my starting point! Here are three short animations using Stop Motion Pro. I made these in 2008.

Dust Chorus
This first one I made during a 3 day taster course in Bristol. It's based on a poem called Dusk Chorus which won first prize in the Roundyhouse Poetry Competition. I was interested to see whether I could express what I wanted to say without using words. Hmmm.... not yet!



Mrs Cheveley in the Conservatory at Tenby
I thought I'd try creating an animation alongside me reading one of the poems. This is a poem that has been published in several literary magazines - one of my Pembrokeshire poems. It's very rough and messy but was great fun to make! The animation won first prize in Leaf Book's Mostly Life competition in 2008, and I performed the poem with the video as a backdrop in Milgi's yurt in Cardiff last year. This definitely spurred me on to continue learning about animation.



Quarry
Another Pembrokeshire poem. From the North coast, a place called Porthgain where there is a disused quarry, and people have used stones to write words all over the quarry floor. This animation is also very messy and didn't really turn out how I had hoped!