Ghosts in the Garden – Animations

I’ve harboured ambitions to be a cartoonist and animator far longer than I have a painter. Fortunately, the tools to make animations are now much cheaper and easier to learn and use than stop motion and 2d animations I devoured and tried to copy as a child. For now I have settled using a bespoke ‘iPad’ applcation called ‘Animation Pro’. Certainly not industry standard, it allows me to create a series of drawn or painted 2nd character puppets and switch their angle and position against a series of 2d background. It all look and moves in a clumsy and jittery way, not unlike the 60s and 70s Peter Lord five minute animations which bridged the end of chidrens TV and the national BBC News.

The short animation ‘The Garden Inspectorate’ mixes the anxiety of the visit by a team of auditors hell bent on taking the fun and creatively out of gardening, an invasion imposing doctrine informed by the committee room and not in the field. It finishes with darker overtones reflecting our fears for the war in Europe as the world leaps from one existential crisis to another.

You can view a short trailer of the work here and a series of still images below. Please contact me directly if you would like to see the full length animation or other animations I have made.