“Atomic Love” was written by Peter Nardini and commissioned by Dr. Colin Campbell, a science professor at the University of Edinburgh interested in making art and music from science such as writing music from of DNA and other biological sequences.
Nardini was asked to write a poem about molecules and atoms, however with only basic knowledge on the subject he gave a double meaning to the poem.
When I first heard this poem, what I got from it was that he compares the presence of a loved one to the all-surrounding presence of molecules with for example: “molecules are in the air, just like you they’re everywhere”. He portrays himself as a singular unit who is lonely, sad and nostalgic who also belittles himself with: “there’s not much on my tiny mind, you wouldn’t want to be me”. I understood from the beginning of the poem that this was sad and nostalgic but it is only at the end that he explains the somber tone of the poem when he mentions the end of his relationship with his “atom friend”, by saying: “before I knew it she had split and our relationship was through.”
When I first heard the poem I had a very clear image in my head of someone either writing a letter to the person they loved without the aim of doing anything about it or giving it to them, or of someone speaking these words out loud to a picture of the person they loved. I saw it as an inner thought of a metaphor of how they feel. What I liked the most about the poem was the metaphor itself, comparing two very opposite things; feelings, which are by nature abstract, and science which is concrete, yet both are things that constantly surround us but that we can never see.
First impression sketches:
My choices:
From this initial interpretation of the poem I wanted to illustrate the presence of the “narrator” as he interjects in his own stories a lot talking directly to the listener, with for example: “well maybe not but it’s hard to tell”. So to me there were two very clear themes to the poem, which I wanted to show visually by using two different animating techniques.
I decided to use a stop-motion character to be the narrator, who goes in and out of talking to the viewer, and I decided to illustrate ‘his story’ in a 2D animated way. I experimented initially with various techniques such as oil pastels and pens and then went on to experimenting with screen-printing for the 2D parts of the animation, which ended up being an interesting and useful experiment.
First 2D experiments:
Screen printed animation on A1 paper:
I liked the result of the screen-printing but the cost was too much compared to the aesthetic difference between the pre-screen printing and the post result. Using the drawings I made in preparation for the screen printing (black pigmented ink on acetate to make the positives for screen printing) I experimented by placing the sheets of acetate on a light box to see the result which I think looked quite striking. So this is what I ended up using for my drawn sequences of animation because it had a scientific feel to it, as if you were looking down a microscope.
The size of each frame I used for the screen print where the size a square post-it note because I needed the scale of the animation to be quite small, to be able to fit all 80 frames an A1 sheets of paper. This square aspect ration was therefore the initial look of my animation, which I ended up keeping somewhat throughout. This decision was conscious as I had the intention of making a “square film” however through the process of animating I decided to go in and out the ‘square’ to 16:9 aspect ratios. I wanted the stop motion animation sequences to feel more open and real in contrast to the 2D story, which I thought should feel more intimate and feel like it was happening inside the stop motion character’s head.
In contrast of the ‘scientific’ looking 2D ink on acetate, I wanted my stop motion to be expressive and malleable. I thought the viewer should believe that the character wrote the poem he is telling; instead of it looking like an animator was using a stop-motion puppet to tell a poem. I knew this was going to be difficult because I’d never tried showing facial expression using clay motion or even tried lip-syncing before but I thought it would add a lot to the emotional side of the poem as well as the very persistent presence of the narrator in the story. I started animating as if the two techniques were separate and independent from each other, thinking I was going to have clean cuts between stop-motion and the 2D animation however I was inspired by Daisy Jacobs’s animation “The Big Picture” to combine the two to create a more homogenous piece. I still wanted the 2D animation to look like it was part of the stop motion’s character’s animation but I realized I could do that while combining the two. I really love Daisy Jacobs animations in which she often combines 2D painted animation with either live action, puppetry or stop motion, going in and out of two dimensional and three dimensional worlds. She uses the three dimensional to emphasize or bring the viewer’s attention in to the subject she is animating which I thought would work well to bring attention to my stop-motion character and make him more affectionate.
(Scene from: The Bigger Pictureby Daisy Jacobs)
Process of animating:
I initially I made several possible storyboards or visual ideas I could make, but finally cut it down to a very rough storyboard. I went through the lyrics of the poem deciding which sentences I was going to make the character lip-sync and which sentences were going to loosely illustrate the scientific metaphor the poet was putting forth. I wanted the viewer to have the same experience one would have listening to the poem, which to me was knowing that what you were hearing (here seeing) wasn’t really what the story was about, but the illustrations allow you to think about what the underlying meaning means to you. It is only when the author talks about the “splitting” that I wanted the idea of the romantic relationship to be more clear. Even though I still decided to represent it as an atom splitting, the science in this scene is very much personified to have a clear meaning to the viewer, which compared to the rest of the animation is more straightforward illustrating a relationship than molecules and atoms.
Rough storyboard:
After deciding my loose storyboard, I went on to animating the drawn animation by pencil drawing first on to post-it notes, which I’d then trace over on top of the acetate with the pigment ink. I kept the square aspect ration for quite a few scenes before I decided to break free from it, which in the end upon reflection I should have done from the beginning. The square ration started to become more distracting as I decided to move away from it. I realized later on when editing that it made the whole animation a lot more disjointed than I wanted it to be. I’d never really thought much about the framing of my films before this but I could really notice the difference in how you perceived each piece of animation depending on its framing.
Once I’d done half of my 2D animation, I started the stop motion process. I did an initial test with my stop motion puppet experimenting with lip syncing, to get to grips with the process as well as deciding whether I wanted my stop motion character to be green screened or whether I should make a physical artificial background. I decided from this experimentation that I needed to make a lip-sync sheet, and that I wanted to green screen the puppet. I thought the green-screened 2D animation I’d done by that point worked really well with the puppet and brought the two contrasting ideas and techniques together.
The 2D animation for me was quite a learning curve because a lot of my previous work has been in stop motion, and throughout animating in 2D I could feel my style of drawn animation change, which for me was quite exciting although for the animation it made it more disjointed than it could have been. As the process of animating went on I started not only drawing but also scratching at the pigment ink on the acetate, which I think gave me more control over movement although again changed the style of the animation. In retrospect I should have done more experimenting with the style and speed of movement of my 2D drawing and not just the physical technique I was going to use.
Editing:
Finding a common aesthetic thread in each sequence of animation, to carry throughout, was harder to find in editing than I thought it would be. I hadn’t realized how my animation style had changed through the process of animating until this point, so consistency is something I’m going to think about a lot more in the future. Although I managed to have just about enough time to join all my animation sequences together and green screen the parts I wanted for the submission, I want to come back to this animation to clean up some scenes, make transitions between scenes more homogenous and also think about coloring and sound design. Working on the sound I think would had a lot to this animation, giving it more depth and maybe making the ‘story’ parts more fantastical.
screen print test.
screen printed sheet
Animation with screen print:
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