Concorde

I was just looking through some of my birthday card designs and I found this classic from my partner Julian's 48th birthday.

I had been sorting out my stamp and envelop collection and I spotted the Concorde stamps. It was a couple of years after Concorde stopped flying in May 2003, after 27 years of commercial flights. 

As Julian used to love looking up at Concorde each day when we first moved to Brixton, (we were in the flight path), I thought he would like the illustration.

The stamp I used was the 9d and was designed by David Gentleman. I found quite an interesting blog designKULTUR on this and other Concorde stamps.  

My Type Face Annie Rexy

When I was a student at the London College of Printing, I started to design a typeface. It was called Annie Rexy. I wanted to make it all bent and crooked like thin, almost broken bones but, the tutor a famous typographer called Frederick Lambert (who's most popular font was probably Compacta), told me I had to design the straight version first. I was quite scared of Fred and he was such a pro, I did exactly as I was told.

Annie Rexy Straight Typeface by Emma Calder 

Each letter was drawn with a 2H pencil, was 4 inches high and drawn on tracing paper, with graph paper underneath, Fred did not allow me to use a compass or a ruler. I would show Fred a letter approximately once a month and he would tell me how to improve it. Sadly I never finished the typeface before finishing the course, although a couple of years ago, almost 30 years since the original design commenced in 1979,  I did do a bit more work on it. Fred had warned me that a decent typeface could take a life time. 

Recently I was asked by an architectural practice, if they could use the typeface for a job involving the names of some clients being carved into the edge of a wooden door. It was the extreme thinness that had attracted them. I will add a link to the door once it is finished.

As I had the work on the computer and it was my daughters birthday, I thought I would make her a card using the typeface. I was messing around trying out the original idea of the skinny, bent bone, lettering and I discovered a filter tool in Photoshop which I had never tried before. Here is the result. 

Birthday Card for Coco

I still need to finish the typeface though!

Back From the Woods

Random Person decided to come on holiday with us. Here she is in our 1963 Mark 2a Land Rover leaving London, with her strange little random friend, that I made some years ago from pipe cleaners.

We camped in a friends wood. Saw no one, went no where, most of the time. I decided to make a special holiday Random Person episode. I'd brought a few props and my camera.

I didn't really have a plan. No story board. All though these films are random. I normally do have a bit of a plan. At least a script. But it was my holiday, so what the hell. The woods were so inspiring. 

Random Person Resting between shots

My Partner Julian Cripps, the brilliant architect, was busy carving wooden spoons from bits of sycamore and when he wasn't looking,

 I borrowed one for random person to play with.

My son Oliver decided to make a couple of hand carved Harry Potter style brooms for Random Person. So she could do some cleaning when she gets home! But she didn't, as you can see when you watch the film.

Quantum Cloud

The latest live episode in my new viral series Random Person is Quantum Cloud. 

Please don't ask me what inspired it, because I can't remember exactly. I keep a book of random things that I come across and quickly storyboard out an idea. In this book is a note about Quantum Clouds and beside it a note about algebra. I know nothing about either, but deep down I probably just really wanted to make a hairy film as I had recently discovered my childhood locks in the tin, that I mentioned in my 1st blog about Random Person. http://emmacaldersmoodydays.blogspot.co.uk/2012_05_01_archive.html

The circa 1960 tin that contained the random stuff that inspired Random Person

Plus I had just purchased some colourful hair switches from the Pimlico car boot. 

 Emma Calder animating Random Person

Or did I get them after I had the idea. Any how it doesn't really matter. Maybe it does matter that head lice have been the bane of my life ever since my kids started school. Or that when stressed, I pull my hair out.

nits from Quantum Cloud (hair courtesy of Julian Cripps)

My fine blond childhood hair, ran out as I animated, so I hunted down my partner Julian's old hair, from before he went grey. I found 4 massive balls of it, all mothy in a draw. It was fantastic to animate but, horrible because of all the insects living in it. If you look carefully at the animation you can actually see a moth flying out and lots of tiny moth eggs dropping out of the hair. The film might have been longer but, to be honest animating moth eaten old hair was not the greatest fun.

My daughter Coco Cripps now 16, composed a music track for the film in Garage band, without a keyboard whilst ill in bed with a cold. 

Please watch, like, share enjoy.

more coming soon.

BBC Persian Click

This is the second blog dedicated to my new viral animation series Random Person.

I have been busy all year making the episodes and have now completed eight, this is over half way towards the thirteen planned for the first series.

Of course, I am well behind schedule, as I am making these films whilst doing paid work to keep going. I am hoping sooner or later to get some investment but, at the moment I am just getting on with the creative part.

Random People take time out to appear in a sting for the BBC.

Still from BBC Persian Click

The most important part of the success of this series will be you, my audience and the more I can get my friends and followers to like, subscribe and share over the internet the better.

You can do this via, you tube or face book, or twitter. So please do spread the word and enjoy. All the buttons to press are on this page.

It is Random, but hopefully fun and I am certainly having fun making it. The whole series can be watched here.  

Random Person the beginning

The first blog about my new animation series "Random Person".

It all started with this man lying unconscious outside the pub. I was with a woman a friend of a friend, in her boyfriends four wheel drive, waiting for a lift home. Finally the boyfriend got into the car and started to drive off, I said, “mind that man, don't run him over." I couldn't see him any longer, I was worried. Then the friend of a friends boyfriend said to me. “What man?” His girl friend replied with a yawn, “just a random person”.

From Emma Calder's note book 2012

I was quite shocked, so this poor unfortunate man was just a random what did that mean?

I thought, if he is random, or could be so described, what am I?

Then I started thinking about how my own life and activities were becoming more and more random.

Random person wears Moody Days Woman's dress, Sindy's lost arms and my partner Julian's Hair before it went grey

It just so happened, that I had done a completely random bit of animation one day last summer, whilst preparing tests for a different film. I had used a doll mask that I had just made and some bits and pieces, I had randomly found in an old tin, that I hadn't opened for over twenty years. The scene had little relevance to the film I was working on, I had just wanted to make the face and use it for something. Now that doll face had a role, it was to become my Random Person.

Taking my Random face from it's plaster caste

I put together the animation with a animated title, filmed from an old jigsaw I had bought in a jumble shop, The Title music was my speeded up and cut up version of a track from the Open Music Archive. I shamelessly hacked all the words out and didn't try to keep to the beat.

I wrote 52 different film ideas down in a day. Selected props, backgrounds and sound effects blind folded and then I started to make some very random films. The idea is that each film is completely random, was made randomly and is about the idea of random or randomosity.

To celebrate randomness I have randomly selected the third episode as the first to go live. (No Bag). In this film Random person goes shopping blind folded...It all goes well until.. 

Cairo

I have just returned from Cairo, as a guest and jury member of The Children's International Film Festival. I took quite a few pictures, here are some of them.

Images of Graffiti around Tahrir Square

Whilst we were there, two demonstrations took place because of alleged current corruption in the parliament and liberal opposition to the Muslim brotherhood.

Some of the people I met, thought there would soon be another revolution. 

Many of the young helpers from the festival had been involved in the revolution last year. One of them a woman in her early twenties took me to Tahrir Square to show me all the graffiti, post revolution. Many taken in Mohammed Mahmoud Street. The site of many clashes between protesters and the police.

As we walked, we talked and she told me how she had been beaten up and sexually molested by soldiers at the demonstration, before she was rescued by some other demonstrators. If she hadn't managed to run away, she would have been imprisoned, like so many other people.

The art on the walls is amazing. Some depicts the martyrs who died in the Port Said football riots February 2012
(many in Egypt believe the the interim military government had something to do with their deaths). 

 The graffiti also depicts the bad guys, many with Hitler style moustaches. 

I hope things can work out for Egypt. So many lies, so much poverty. The rich and powerful people in Cairo, should be ashamed. 

But... many of the young people I met, hope for a brighter future, they just thought it would take a lot of time.

Serial rapists could have been escaping justice because of police failures

I was listening to the BBC Radio news this morning and heard something about, if the police had a more joined up approach to serial rape, they might actually catch the perpetrators. This took me right back to the summer of 1983. 

 Emma Calder outside Nottingwood House In July 1983

The pictures that I drew right after the event, are used to illustrate the story. Rough and drawn in haste.

It was a hot Friday in July and my flat mate and her boyfriend had just gone away for the weekend, something they never did, my boy friend was also not around. I was very pleased to have our council flat in Notting Hill, all to myself.

The flat was dirty, my flat mate and her boyfriend had turned into slobs and just drank Thunderbird and whiskey, they never cleaned and I also had been very busy finishing my M.A and didn't clean either.

I put the radio on, John Peel to start with, got out the mop and hoovered and cleaned and cleaned all evening. It was hot, all the lights were all on, I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

Exhausted I went to bed it must have been about 2am. The window was ajar, I was unaware that my boyfriend had removed the window locks, because of the heat.

Around about seven I woke, I could hear something by the window. Before I opened my eyes, I had thought it was my dad, as he lived just up the road, bringing me post, or a pint of milk, as he often did but, it wasn't him.

We lived in a first floor flat, with a walkway balcony outside. I looked towards my bedroom window. 

 Emma Calder's notebook 1983

A small black head with short dreads was popping over the top of the window, then he was pushing it right down, in his hand he had a very long, very sharp kitchen knife. As he started to climb over the window, he saw me looking at him from my bed and he said,

 “I am going to fucking rape you!”

I can remember my fear, like it happened yesterday. I leapt out of bed completely naked, ran towards the window, right at him, knife and all and I screamed. 

The most primeval scream, I have ever heard, or made and I screamed and screamed and screamed, it echoed all around the housing estate. Then he backed off from the window and climbed down and ran away. Despite my screams, no one came to my assistance. I phoned the police. 

The police came, asked questions but, they mainly, just took fingerprints. They said someone from the rape squad would call me. The following day or so, a woman from the rape squad did come. I can still remember her quite well, she was about thirty with long brown hair. What she had to say though, completely shocked me and is why nearly thirty years on I am writing this blog and I am wondering what has changed.

“Well” she said. “You know the local police aren't going to be interested in solving this crime, don't you? Because the guy who tried to break in and rape you, was black and he fits the description of the Shepherds Bush rapist. They reckon he got the first tube, it all fits, he always does it early on in the morning. They won't bother trying to catch him, because your police are the Notting Hill police and they want to catch the Notting Hill rapist and he's white, so it's not him, but they won't catch the Shepherds Bush rapist because he's not their responsibility and the Shepherds Bush police won't bother coming up here to question you, because it isn't on their patch.”

Then she said, that the man had tried to get into another flat upstairs, before they had tried my flat and she said we should go up together to talk to those people as it might make us all feel better. They were a mother and grown up daughter, I didn't know them, it was not a very sociable estate. We went into their flat and the policewoman said, that I was the other person that the rapist had tried to attack, they were very quiet and embarrassed. I suddenly thought they would have heard me scream, but they had done nothing, they had seen the man and they still did nothing, not even call the police. I said to them did you hear me scream, they were speechless. We left the flat, the police woman said they were probably too frightened, although I had always thought she took me up there to deliberately shame them. She said when questioned, people from all over the estate had heard me scream but, no one had rung them.

The policewoman said, I would not hear another word from the police as they were all having too much fun busting the black guys for drugs in St Marks Road W.11. She left me a number to call for counselling and that was it. I think they did eventually catch the Notting Hill rapist but, I never found out about the Shepherds Bush one.

Coco's locket

This is brief as I have been working hard and now have done my back in, so haven't done blog lately. But, more coming soon on my new animation series, which I will be previewing bits from soon.

Tomorrow is my daughters sixteenth birthday. As my back is painful I had to do something very quickly and small, so here's is my old Victorian locket now with watercolours of myself and Coco's father Julian. I hope she likes it. I have been meaning to do it every year since she was born.

Emma Cader and Julian Cripps inside Coco's locket

Ilkla Moor Baht Hat

It is thirty years since I made my first film Ilkla Moor Baht Hat at the Royal College of Art. As I was just reminded, by an organisation researching the films that were shown in The New Contemporaries Exhibition in 1982. 
 

Ilkla Moor Baht Hat 1981 by Emma Calder

They also wanted recollections about the exhibition. Sadly I didn't go to the show, I was too busy working on my next film Madame Potatoe, but, I do have a few bits and pieces connected to the film.

The leaflet I made for the RCA Second Year Show

Half way through my first year there was an opportunity for Graphics and Illustration students to do an animation workshop with the animators (Heros of my childhood) Bob Godfrey (Roobarb, Henry's Cat and many more...) Dick Taylor (Crystal Tips and Alistair and more).

Some drawings I did of Dick Taylor, the day Dick and Bob Godfrey came to introduce their work.

Afterwards, our Graphics tutor said she would tutor us on our storyboards when Bob and Dick weren't around. About eighteen students signed up to do the animation and the plan was to each make a very short film.

Unfortunately this tutor was very hard on the students. She said our ideas wouldn't work for animation, or were a waste of time. She also told me I couldn't draw. I said I was interested in the circular idea of the Yorkshire song and I thought the simple story of the song a good way to start learning animation. I did agree about the bad drawing though, so I drew all the art work really small in the hope that enlarged the drawings would have a more interesting quality.

Here is the original artwork sheet before being blown up on a PMT (Photo Mechanical Transfer) machine, coloured and cut out ready for the paper cut out animation.

 Artwork from Ilkla Moor Baht Hat

Bob and Dick were very encouraging to us all but, this tutor was so negative about my work, I decided to stop working on the film and I disappeared from college for three weeks. Visiting my friend in the Lake District with all the artwork and storyboard. She liked my idea, told me I was giving up too easily and I should listen to Bob and Dick, not a tutor, who probably had some other private agenda.

When I arrived back in the studio at the RCA my desk was covered in funny drawings by Bob Godfrey, who had been searching for me to tutor. He was quite desperate as all the other students had given up their films. Thanks to the tutor. What was her name? 

 

Bob Godfrey's funny drawing of my character from Ilkla Moor Baht Hat

So I carried on making the film, luckily for Bob and Dick, as they thought they were going to be sacked.

The head of the film school Dick Ross, let me have the entie budget set aside for the animation workshop, so I was able to make a proper film shot on 16 mm negative stock, not just a little test as had been originally planned for each student.

  

The artwork and storyboards took about six weeks, We recorded the music in the piano room at the RCA prior to doing the animation, in one take, in one half hour session. The animation and editing took about two weeks. The song was sung and played on the piano by David E Glasson then of Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band (and now playing with Three Bonzos and a Piano).

If I had listened to the tutor, things might have turned out very differently!

R.I.P Small Leaf Lime Tree

All this year I have been mourning, but for nothing or nobody.

Every day I'd wake up with the same feeling. That deep sadness that you feel when someone you love has died. Then I would walk down to the builders yard where I work, look up at the trees over hanging the space and feel much better.

Breathing in the moist damp air from beneath a beautiful small leaf lime, over 20 meters high. Home to a pair of jays, numerous wood pidgeons, squirrels and the lime hawk moths who came to lay their eggs once a year. The tree would give me a wonderful feeling and make me glad to be alive. 

 The end of the line for the small leaf lime tree

 and our lime hawk moths enjoying life to the full last year

Then out of the blue, we were informed by the owners of the garden that the lime tree grew in, that they were having the tree cut down.

They hated the lack of light in their flat and couldn't be bothered with having it cut back regularly to resolve the problem. Nothing we could say would change their mind, even offering to pay for it to be trimmed was no good, they just wanted to get rid of the tree. It was their right and they could.

Why are people so obsessed with light and hate trees so much. Ironic when I sometimes feel the world is descending into darkness, maybe that is why?

Two weeks later our other neighbours on the other side of our yard cut down all their trees too. Now we just have to stare at all their dull houses.

The saddest thing of all was the wood pidgeon. After they chopped the last of the trees down, he was flying around searching wildly for his nest and chicks, then he picked up a single twig in his beak, all that was left of the last tree and sat on our fence bewildered. 

From Emma Calder's note book 2011

Then I thought I knew what all my grief had been leading up to.

But, I was wrong!

London Riots 2011

I feel really bad walking round my area today and so sad that things have come to this.

Sticker Workshop Lambeth County Fair

Just a few snaps from my sticker event at Lambeth County Fair last Saturday. The weather was horrendous but it didn't stop the constant flow of keen sticker makers. 

In 5 hours we produced over 3000 individual stickers. 

The kids and adults were brilliant, some producing whole books. 

To be honest I did very little, except tidy up and make a few very small suggestions.

It was great to see how inspiring my stickers were to others and I am feeling back in the mood to do some more myself.

Actually, I did just do a new set but, I haven't quite finished them. When they are ready I'll be selling them through my new on line shop http://emmacalder.bigcartel.com.