FA7036 - London Animation Club 1/3/16

This London Animation Club event took place on 1st March 2016.

Martin opened the session by saying he curated five-minute long films for a film festival in Hull.

The guest for that evening was Ian Gouldstone. He studied animation at the RCA and founded Pachinko Pictures.

Website: http://iangouldstone.com

Ian went through his work chronologically starting with his work at Harvard. He did a maths class but wanted to do an animation class with Wendy Tilby, who directed When the Day Breaks. His first film is called All Very Well and Good, an under-the-camera piece that has a cut-out look. His BA film is called Timber, which appears to be a hand-drawn piece.

He made two films at the RCA. His first is called Corollary (2004) that had an abstract look with lots of text, equations and drawings. His graduation film is called guy101 and it opened with the sound of a modem connecting to the Internet in the 1990s. It's about a person who meets a man online. It consists of a computer screen with several windows opening and has an old computer game graphics look. It won the award for the best animated short film at the 2007 BAFTAs. Ian was grateful for the help he received for his writing at the RCA.

Corollary

guy101

Oxfam approached Ian and wanted to work with him. He pitched a script to them about climate change. The film he made from them also had old computer game-style animation.

He made a film for Game City, a computer game festival that takes place in Nottingham. It resembled a Rubik's Cube as well as illuminated dance floors.

To Whom It May Concern uses different kinds of animation and has some abstract shots. He made this in collaboration with animation students based in Newport, South Wales.

He also showed the trailer to LOL-a-Coaster. The game was unfortunately pulled from the Apple App Store. The man who accompanied Ian played the game from an iPad connected to Ian's laptop.

Ian was once given a song called Take A Walk and could make any animation to go with it so it would become an animated music video. He also showed a clip of a game called Sunshine. He demonstrated a simple monochromatic game called Tangram Program where he controlled a triangle moving around a large circle.

He worked on another music video project to a song called OMG OMG by a band called Oh My Goodness.

Ian made a game called Love Love as an installation for a gallery. It looks like Pong but has a repetitive pattern of Ian's head revolving in the background where one appears to be out of sync with the others. It is called Love Love because the paddles are controlled by AI and could not score any more than love (a zero score in tennis).

He showed a project that linked to guy101 and is based on Teletext. While he mentioned that Teletext has been 'killed off' in the UK it is still being used in certain European countries such as Austria. He mentioned the irony of showing a low-quality Teletext-inspired image on a gigantic IMAX screen.

One of his most recent projects resembles a screensaver that says, "never ever in the same place twice," several times. He found text one of the easiest things to work with.

Ian showed repetitive patterns of characters he created, such as one called Cody, who bears a resemblance to his brother, and another called Poison. Poison has a palette-swap character called Roxy.

He set up an installation of several old phones and consoles in a shop window.

The last project Ian showed was an interactive installation with a character called Megaman.

In June Ian will be hosting an exhibition as well as an installation in Edinburgh.

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