Paper Theatre Animation
Three animated pieces exploring paper-layer illustration in After Effects. "Winter Solstice," released on 21st December last year, takes the viewer through 38 seconds of prehistoric scenes across the British Isles — Stonehenge, Newgrange, the Mari Lwyd, and a crannog — with backgrounds broken into many hand-illustrated layers to create depth as the camera moves, the result of several days' work in personal time. A short 15-second "Happy Easter" piece for Headland shares the same layered approach in a single scene. The Halloween short, my first project in After Effects, pulls back from rolling hills to reveal archaeological silhouettes with jack-o'-lantern faces — the piece that prompted senior management to request further animated content for social media.
Puppet Animation
A test of viability for using After Effects' puppet tool on 2D reconstructions — the butcher scene builds on an earlier experiment by a colleague using static, line-drawn reconstructions, adapted here into full animation. The isolated limb assets show individual puppet-rigged parts before assembly into the final scene. Following the test's success, a closer collaboration produced the second piece: scenes were directed and animated by myself, with the line-drawn artwork produced by my colleague in the same style, timed for release at the start of this year's World Cup.
