Folkestone Living Advent Calendars 2022-2023

The Folkestone Living Advent Calendar’s logo. Image © JimJam Arts.

In November 2022, I did some animations for the Folkestone Living Advent Calendar. They include: a boy putting tinsel over Cornelia Parker’s Folkestone Mermaid’s neck like a scarf to invite her to the festive holiday fun and keep her from feeling left out; the Crowned Death skull’s crown changing into a Santa Claus hat with Christmas lights as children (named Jimmy, Joanne, Robert and Kimiko) run past him; Mark Dion’s Giant Seagull on Wheels parking near a street art seagull on a house to keep his company, before they watch a fireworks display and the children celebrate; and Jimmy giving Sophie Ryder’s Standing Lady-Hare and Dog a present, which brightens up their colours. The animations were made using Adobe After Effects, Photoshop and Character Animator (children walking and running).

Robert runs past the Folkestone Mermaid, who sits alone staring at the sea.

A boy gives the Folkestone Mermaid some tinsel to wear as a scarf, turning her frown upside down.

Jimmy runs past the rotating Crowned Death skull.

The Crowned Death skull’s crown changes into a Santa Claus hat with Christmas lights.

The Giant Seagull on Wheels parks near the surprised street art seagull as Joanne skips across the car park.

Jimmy, Joanne, Robert and Kimiko celebrate the fireworks display.

Jimmy, Joanne and Kimiko walk and run past an old brick building.

The Standing Lady-Hare and Dog gloomily hang their heads as they watch the children from the shadows.

Jimmy kindly gives the Standing Lady-Hare and Dog a present…

In November 2023, I produced three animations for an exhibition/live performance for the Folkestone Living Advent Calendar, named The Trial of Jack Frost. I used ProCreate to make a mugshot turnaround of four characters (a grumpy alien picking his nose, a goofy mummy with vampire fangs, a Boris Johnson-caricatured Frankenstein’s monster and a robot rabbit), and did a stop motion laser cutout silhouette segment of Jack Frost stealing a stocking full of presents. The cutouts were drawn in ProCreate and edited in Adobe Illustrator. They were then exported separately as a layered rig with labeled layers from Photoshop to be used in a title sequence for the exhibition, made using After Effects. In it, Jack drops down from above, bouncing on the spot when he lands. He points at his name, ‘Jack Frost’, in the title, its cutout-style letters flying and rolling into place. Then his name moves down a little to make way for ‘The Trial of’, much to Jack’s displeasure. Lydia Hibbert gave instructions on how to animate Jack and the letters. First, I set the anchor point for each body part in After Effects using the “Pan Behind Tool”. Next, I made an image sequence for the head positions and Time Remapped them. After that, I arranged and imported all the assets (including the letters). We downloaded Duik and installed the plugin to After Effects, and learned how to create arms and set up the armature for both arms, set up and saved workspaces that best suited the task. Then, I used the “Shy” switches to clean up my timeline and keyframed my “C” layers. I animated the rigged two-dimensional puppet, added the animated letters and used the “Posterize Time” effect to give the effect of a stop motion sequence, before exporting the film and uploading it to Dropbox. The exhibition opened today at 5:30pm, and was open between 6pm-7pm.