Damian Gascoigne
STOCKPORTICUS TALK 2009
110 Years In Animation

'Damian Gascoigne joined Picasso Pictures in 1993, already an established illustrator and animation director, having directed work such as the BBC Holiday Programme titles and a number of short films.'

I enjoyed the STOCKPORTICUS TALK alot! This is only because I am rather entertained not only by his work, but him as well. Starting out as an illustrator Gascoigne found his place in hand drawn animation. He started off telling us about his family endearingly dubbing his mother a drunk and a short slide show of pictures including his 90 yr old aunt Liza and her burly mate?! :) The lecture happily moved on to a more serious but non the less entertaining, He spoke about his research, how he is always doing something and makes a point of drawing everyday. Doodling, collecting and photographing anything he deems of interest, weather he can think of a point to it yet or not. "Everywhere and everything has potential" This is something he said that attracted my attention, I share this view but I find it difficult to get my day to day personal work into my current work. Something else I picked up on was the way he is interested in posture, 'how people hold themselves up', this relates directly to his character design within his imagry and animation. His doodles often from life are inspired by his surroundings, weather it be a laugh or someones shoes, he draws what HE see and decides weather to do anything with it right there and then! or later.

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. MUSO SOUP .

For example his new project 'Muso Soup', it is an animation of two guys arguing over who's taste in music is better and decide to settle it by having a ping-pong match using their records as paddles! We saw a minute or so of it and saw some development of the characters, the dialogue seemed pretty funny. Although Gascoigne has an issue with 3D animation looking to real he "doesn't see the point". Therefore he roped in a former student to collaborate and use his 3d image making skill to help. Gascoigne expressed his love for working with a team, saying that taking on a more art director with in 'Muso Soup' and working with fellow designers able to bring different skills and ideas to the table. "Appreciating the senses..." and "...the way things just are." seems to be some more sound advice from Gascoigne, these points are echoed by the installation he held in Japan (I didn't write down the date), in which he projected drawn and animated images (that looked as though you were flicking through them)on to a giant Styrofoam book. The animation was born from an image diary Gascoigne kept on a daily basis for around four years. The drawings, always drawn into the same format, depicted his feelings, his day, something he saw or ate (the list goes on), flicking faster past the parts he doesn't want you to see an slowing down for the parts that he does. 'Named 'The Love Books'. After the animation fades the focus is switched to the adjacent wall and from a still table and chair (also projected), rises a nude, disjointed, beautifully formed, space woman thing that swam off into the eather. Watching the screen and and glancing around the room I noticed that the piece was quite emotionally charged for him (obviously, it took him four years to make I know), The space woman, climbing out and then swimming away after a while maybe signifying the end of the installation but also is the space woman a representation of an ending and then letting go?! He went on to explain that the space woman was a woman he was 'obsessed' with and she always manifested her self in his work as this space woman, i think i may have been kind of right but i dint think it would be such a heavy reason. Gascoigne uses his commercial work to fund his personal work he describes his experiences when pitching for commercial jobs and they were not all fairy tale endings, pitching for seven different jobs (unpaid of course) and not getting any, until he confirmed a commission on the 23rd December 2008 (yes I wrote down the date). Gascoigne describes himself as 'Not house trained', 'Un-employable', ' Nerves of a gambler' and he can't have a boss 'telling him what to do' and says he prefers to work in a collaborative way getting the best from his ideas and working in a creative environment. Gascoigne is in the Studio We had the pleasure of meeting Damian Gascoigne, and I (yes me) made a cake for MILTONs birthday and he liked it so that's got to be good :) (wooop!)Hes a funny guy and i also managed to sqidge some collaboration information from his head, and basically said I'm good with people and I sounded like i knew what I was talking about and working in a creative environment would be a good place for me to be. I do agree with him on that, even if its a collaboration or more like a Big Orange set up putting myself in creative surroundings would benefit me quite alot when I leave.

On on that note.

"You don't have to be apologetic for you or your work"

I think this comment made me think a little bit about the reservations I have within my work.

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I really enjoyed this lecture more for its insight into his method of working, he didn't show that much of his work. Its bin emotional .

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