Influences

To develop my desired storybook feel, I have been looking at illustrators like Kay Nielsen and Errol Le Cain. Nielsen was popular in the early 20th Century, while Le Cain was active from the mid-1960s. Le Cain even worked as an animator with Richard Williams, whose masterpiece The Thief and the Cobbler (A work that was tragically compromised due to release obligations) has been an influence on me since childhood. 

Of particular interest to me is both illustrator's use of botanical ornamentation, which harkens back to medieval art. An excellent collection of Nielsen's work can be viewed at 50watts. A mood board featuring some of Le Cain's work can be seen below. To me, these works are reminiscent of the Italian painter known as il Sassetta, especially his work "Saint Anthony the hermit tormented by demons".

Another very important influence on my project, and something of a revelation to me, is the animation work of Lotte Reiniger. The 'shadow puppet' style she devised allowed her to create beautiful, intricate compositions that still retained an elegant simplicity. My plan to create animations using digital collage techniques is merely an extension of this idea. I had planned to look at traditional shadow puppet shows in my research, but Reiniger's work was a step above.

The title of my project is 'Particle Puppets', a reference to the way I composite images in Photoshop. Because I use white figures on black backgrounds in a subtractive colour environment (i.e. a screen as opposed to a printed page), I can composite my images together using the 'Screen' blend mode. This means that when I overlay multiple images on top of one another, they grow brighter instead of getting darker and more muddy. Thus, my 'shadow puppets' are actually more like 'light puppets' - and because my puppets are digital rather than analog, it is more appropriate to call them particles than waves. Indeed, the whole basis of my project is the property of digital files that allows them to be cut into particles.