Previous AA2A Artist

Andrew Dixon

Year:
2009-10
Project summary:

The opportunity to be a part of Artists Access to Art College meant, to me, a chance to do something that I wouldn’t otherwise do. My decision to work on an animation came very easily, as much of my work is a marriage of words and pictures and I am happiest when I’m working on that kind of project. I have only ever produced one animation and that was twenty years ago when I was studying in college.

The animated series’ I remember from my childhood in the 1970’s were magical. There was nothing polished about them. They gave an overall sense of being handmade and less than perfect. This is something I’m hoping to recreate in my dark little way with my own short film.

I first used this idea for a newspaper strip a few years ago. My story was very loosely based on “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas. Mine was less poetic, but funnier. “A Boys Buggering Christmas in Wales” is about a boy called Idris who discovers he has a brother, Illtyd, living in a jar next to the pickles and the meat product pies in their mother’s pantry. Idris promptly takes Illtyd outside to play snowballs. Illtyd is no good at the game as he lives in a jar, so he becomes angry and uses his strange mental powers to bring a snowman to life to defend him.

I have discovered over these last two terms just how much time needs to be spent on an animation long before you can even start making it move. Consequently, this isn’t quite yet the motion picture epic I had imagined but a work in progress, which I hope to finish in time for the Christmas market. If this is the success I think it could be, every child’s going to want an Illtyd in a jar.

'Stairs'