Okay, I must confess something. Though I am obsessed with still images, moving images (as in films/TV/adverts) have never really got my pulse racing. I know it’s not fashionable or very 21st century, but they just haven’t.
I am a man who is prone to contemplation and analysis, so perhaps I prefer working with stills as they give me the time to do this, whereas a movie reel doesn’t allow for it so much.Maybe my brain is just a little slow, though I wonder how much real-time analysis one can do at 30 frames-per-second.
Whatever. I like still images. And animation. I’ve always loved animation, especially low framerate stuff which is all jumpy. Seeing the joins between frames gives me the comfort of seeing the individual stills which make up the animation so I can work out what is going on, plus, I like the charm of it. But that’s just me; I know there’s plenty of people out there who like things as slick as they come, if not slicker, but I’m not one of them. So, this is about as motion-orientated as my work gets - a jumpy stopframe animation done for a part of a website I have been working on. It was shot with a Nikon D70 DSLR and 3 flashguns, then pieced together in Adobe Imageready.
It is going to be used to visually represent the ‘virtual receptionist’ which allows people to chat directly to one of the company directors when they are online. There’s a still version for when nobody from the company is available to chat, and the animated version above which comes to life when somone logs on.
Incidentally, the guy in the animation is David Cameron Walker, the new daytime voice of BBC Radio 1, provider of voiceover links between the different programs and news bulletins etc. So, if you have heard his voice and were wondering what he looks like, wonder no more. Just don’t expect me to make any jokes about him having ‘a good face for radio’. (Sorry Dave, just kidding).
