Anna Warren BA (Hons) Illustration with Animation
The primary medium of my practice is 2D digital animation, as it is the industry I hope to work within in the future. However, I have always been passionate about exploring how animation can be made more interactive and reach beyond a screen to the audience in physical forms. My final year became a perfect opportunity to develop this further, exploring ways to allow children to interact with a story and bring it into their world.
Thematically, my work focuses around corruption and questionable moral behaviour within society, aiming to open discussion for young children, in the form of humorous animated stories. The work exhibited here is the result of merging together and re-interpreting the short medieval tales of Reynard The Fox into a new story, titled, Reynard’s Day in Court. The story follows a fox named Reynard as he steals, outwits and manipulates fellow animals of the forest, all for his own gain and greed; somehow always managing to cheat his way out of his just deserts.
The interactive aspect of this year’s project grew out of my research into traditional British travelling puppet theatres, specifically the notorious ‘Punch and Judy’ puppets. This led me to create my own puppet theatre and puppets, depicting the main characters within the Reynard’s Day In Court animation. I used the traditional mediums of papier-mache, paint and fabric, which were historically used to create the Punch and Judy style figures. These puppets act as a prompt to encourage children to open discussion around the subject matter of the animation through role play. This allows children more ownership of the subject and serves to incorporate interactive animate aspects within my work. Using this dual approach and my passion for animation and puppetry, I have found a platform to develop my practice to engage children and wider audiences through an expanded practice, exploring how screen and object can be merged together to approach all kinds of subject matters.
