Interview with Amy Lockhart

Above is an example of Amy Lockhart's work, Trixy recommended that I speak to her about her process as she generally mixes traditional cutout and composites them digitally.


A) Workflow for purely digital
> cutout animation, and the software packages that cut
> out animators gravitate to.

I am really into framethief and istopmotion. These are
programs you can download for cheap or free and use
with a digital video camera or digital still camera to
capture frames/images. I capture in these and then
bring them into final cut or imovie to make the
soundtrack, final piece etc.
These programs are great because they make animating
so much more accessible to people. and your set up can
be way more simple and nomadic. I am currently working
on a project that I have worked on in 4 different
cities at my home studio, in each.

B) How traditional
> Cutout animation is/can be an element of a larger
> digital composition - a more hybrid approach.

so my take on this is......

I am into traditional aniamtion over computer
animation because sometimes computter animation seems
like cheating. i.e. when flash does the inbetweening
for you or toonboom does the mouth movements for
lipsynching, etc. this offends my sensibilities,
heh...

I am really into using the tried and true animation
techniques. either drawn or under the camera, moving
things around as if I was using a film camera. then I
import these frames into final cut or after effects
and edit them together or else create different
layers, by doing digital multiplane. so shooting
different layers of animation seperately and putting
them all together as one image in after effects, etc,
using chroma key (blue screen) to erase the
backgrounds, etc.

basically i like to animate as if I am using film but
then do post in video, so addding effects, layers,
sound, etc...
i like the accessability and cheap cost of video over
film, but I like the traditional film way to animate
so i spend more time making art and animating in real
life rather than on the computer.

i am just babbling away, maybe we should talk about
this on the phone. tomorrow night might be good. or
sunday?
I can talk to you more about ow I actually used it to
do my cut out animation A SINGLE TEAR and also the one
I am working on now.