Accomplished, professional Shrewsbury-based animator Samantha Moore has been recently worked as an advisor to the Flip festival and I caught up with her at her home in Shrewsbury, which also acts as her studio. ME: What’s it been like working with the Flip project?
 | | Rich and velvety, by Samantha Moore |
Sam: Really exiting. It's been really good fun developing animation within this region. As a region, animation isn't particularly one of out strengths but we're working really hard to change that and the Flip festival is key to that change... and hopefully prompting some new people to do it Me: What exactly have you been doing to encourage animation? Sam: The Flip festival is really inclusive. The idea is that it’s for everybody not just for animation specialists. So there are bits of it that are for graduates who want to enter the industry, there are bits which are for industry professionals, and there are bits that are for kids who can come along and do workshops and do hands-on stuff. There is a strand that is reaching teachers and how to do animation in the classroom, which is pretty cool. And there’s lots of celebratory stuff - there’s going to be a students award ceremony on Saturday that will be celebrating animation in the rest of the region.
Watch BBC Shropshire TV's cut of Samanth Moore's award-winning animation, Success with Sweet Peas
 Success with Sweet Peas >
Audio and Video links on this page require Realplayer
|
Me: Do you have a favourite type or style of animation that you like to work with or like to see? | "Doubled Up has just finished screening at the Chicago National Film Festival... [My films] have a much better social life than I do." | | Shrewsbury animator Samantha Moore |
Sam: No, not really. I teach at the University of Wolverhampton and we pride ourselves on trying to get the students trying different styles. We're really keen on stopping students from getting suckered into particular styles. A lot of students tend to think that because 3D computer generated is popular at the moment that’s what they should be doing and so they get really hung up on software. But we're really keen that they should try their hand at everything: oil on glass, sand on glass, 3D models. We look at all different types of animation, I mean animation is a horribly laborious process. Me: How long have you been working as an animator? Sam: I've been working as an animator for about 11 years the same time I've been teaching animation. Me: How did you first get interested in it? Sam: I did a degree in literature and fine arts and I did painting. But I got a bit bored with painting and wanted to make it move, so I started to put my paintings onto the camera and I started doing oil on glass animation. After I graduated I did a post grad in fine art and film and just kind of pottered on in my own little peculiar way. I've never actually been taught animation, but I don't really broadcast that to my students. I think animation is quite open to that - it’s a very open medium for people who want to find their own way. You can be quite eccentric in animation. It's not like live action, you can quite happily work on something quite peculiar and then just unleash it on the world and see what they make of it, and that’s what I like about it, the surprise.
 | | From Sam Moore's Success with Sweet Peas |
Me: What have you got planned for the future? Sam: I got an award from the Welcome Trust, which is a big charitable organisation in London. Through their sci-art which is science and art and so I'm working with the psychology department at UCL and the New London Orchestra. We're doing a project about synesthesia which is a brain condition where two senses are triggered by one. For example if you see something you might also hear something. People quite often have coloured days of the week - if you say Wednesday is pink then quite often people will say no it's red and they won't be able to tell why they think that they just know it's red. I'm working with people who have a music audiovisual synesthesia So when they hear music they see a colour, and we're doing an animation project that’s going to be in the London Science Museum which is going to be an active exhibit, and I hope to turn it into a film eventually. Because my work is documentary, I work in documentary animation that is again a quite peculiar path to take. Me: What other topics have you covered in your documentaries? Sam: The last film made was Doubled Up, that was about having twins because I have twin sons. It was semi autobiographical and documentary at the same time, about what it's like to have multiple pregnancy and birth. Before that I made a film called Success with Sweet Peas which was about competitive sweet pea growing in Shropshire, in Wem, and I was talking to some lovely people who grow sweet peas up there. They've both been quite peculiar subjects and odd little things but they've done really well. Doubled Up has just finished screening at the Chicago National Film Festival and they've kind of gone all around the world. They have a much better social life than I do. Me: It's getting easer to create animation isn't it?
 | | From Success with Sweet Peas |
Sam: I think when I started about ten years ago everything was analogue and my first film was a 35 mm and the budget was £40,000. But the film I just made was entirely digital and the budget was £20,000 and obviously that’s not great for me but I probably made more money on this one actually because there is less money for the process. As a working mother who lives in the wilds of Shropshire - I made my previous film living in London and I knew everybody and I worked in Soho and I kind of lived that life. The reason I'm able to keep film-making is because the technology has allowed me to and that’s what I love about it. Anyone with a PC can make animation and there’s no limit to what or where it can go. It can literally end up being all over the world. | 
