I just like moving things around

Adventures in non-verbal storytelling

I've been taking a break from writing.

To begin with, I decided to step back from my day job writing podcast scripts. The plan was, I would spend more time developing my own fiction projects. I mapped out five prospective ideas for new books, and with the help of my agent whittled it down to four. The next step was to work up more detailed outlines for each of those before deciding which one I would commit to.

But then I got distracted.

I've always been interested in animation. "Is it because you like to control things?" a friend asked. "You mean like a God complex?" I replied, slightly shocked by the question. I shook my head. "I just like moving things around," I insisted.

But maybe that is the definition of a God complex?

Taking a step back, I think what I've actually been doing is experimenting with non-verbal storytelling. Maybe that sounds a bit pretentious. But I had been doing a lot of writing. Words, words, words, words, words. I felt overwhelmed by them. I needed a break. I needed to clear my head. I still wanted to do something creative. But I didn't want it to involve damned words.

I could have taken a life drawing class, I suppose. But I decided on working my way through an animation tutorial.

I've dabbled in animation before, making various trailers for my books and this short film using Blender.

Blender is a 3D animation software. I've also worked with Moho, a 2D animation software, which is what I used to create the Rusty Gully film shown above. It was a Moho tutorial that I worked through. As I went along, I had a go at the various exercises suggested, trying out different animation techniques on my own ideas.

I bought myself a cheap (£20) stylus and pad so that I could input my drawings into the programme. I haven't quite got the hang of using it yet. My first sketches tend to be pretty awful, and I have to do a lot of mouse-manipulation of the lines to tidy them up.

I wanted to keep things simple. Which is why I opted for a black and white line style.

I started off just drawing lines and animating them. That kind of suggested waves, or maybe I had waves in mind all along... The sequences evolved from one another. I put a boat on the waves, then explored what was happening beneath the sea.

It was quite early on in the process that I decided to use the track Rusty Gully, performed by Brown Wimpenny. Brown Wimpenny are a traditional folk band from Manchester. My son Luke plays banjo and sings with them. So there's a connection there.

The music really pulled my ideas together. The song gave me a structure to build my sequences around. And the band's performance provides a fantastic drive and energy that really propels the movement.

Unlike my written storytelling, I didn't work to a plan. I just thought of an idea for a particular section of the track, worked on it and then moved on to the next bit.

Of course, it took a lot longer than I envisaged to complete the project. First, because animation is very time-consuming. Especially if you're a beginner, like me. I made a lot of mistakes. I spent hours, days, animating sequences and then when I watched them back decided that they were really clunky or glitchy or I just hated them. So I would rethink that sequence and do it again.

It was a time pit. But somehow, as frustrating as it was, the process did help to clear my mind of words, replacing them in fact with numbers, as I counted frames and calculated various angles, distances and dimensions.

Of course, AI could have produced something for me in seconds. But where's the fun, the satisfaction, the pain... in that?

Anyhow, I think I've got the animation urge out of my system. For now at least. So I suppose I'd better get back to writing.