James Merry

Super rough test animation; My first attempt at rotoscoping in Photoshop. So far, my initial thoughts are that animating in Photoshop is nice, and works better than I thought it would. Who knew?

I’m drawing bees for Sophie Woolley and Gemma Fairlie’s Tin Bath Theatre Company. Check out the Bee Detective buzz here.

I’ve won an award! This is the Clin d’œil Award for Best Special Effects 2011, for my animation work on Hands Solo.

Massive thanks to Charlie and Billy for allowing me to draw pictures all over their films.

This was made in collaboration with Bump, back in…. 2002? I think..? A looooong time ago, any which way you look at it, anyway. For a Channel 4 TV pilot based on the infamous Shoreditch Twat periodical.

Shoreditch Private Army from James Merry on Vimeo.

Really nice post about me on Charlie Swinbourne’s website

This film was produced and funded by the Channel 4 Mesh scheme, back in 2003. I’m still proud of it.

A young girl’s adventures through how I imagined the Russian Far East to be. This, being before I had managed to go there in person, it’s a fairly embellished artist’s interpretation of what the Russian Far East could be.

I made this film all the way back in 1998, when I was an animation student at Farnham, Surrey.

The idea behind the film was my own frustration at being deaf, and having to keep up in social situations full of hearing people, and the way that hearies just don’t, or can’t understand. It won an award, you know; The Royal Television Society Best Student Animation 1998, Southern Region.

This, having been made back in the days before I corrupted myself with After Effects and hence subsumed into the almighty CG Borg, consisted of just over 3000 individual ink and chalk-pastel drawings. It was then shot at 12 frames per second, onto 16mm film, via a camera mounted onto a special rostrum. Then, due to the usual art school lack of funds, I had to transfer from 16mm film to VHS, and do my final edit and sound dub on that. On VHS! How embarrassing.

The ambient sound was recorded onto a DAT which I had smuggled into a real pub, that I worked at the time.

Pub Conversation from James Merry on Vimeo.

This was my RCA graduation film. Made in 2001. Thats ten years ago. TEN!

Anyway, it’s based on the old fairy tale of the same name. This was my first foray into 3D animation, and I had to teach myself 3DS Max. I used my old PC with a Windows 98, which I remember liked to crash an awful lot. Everything had to be stored in a shoebox full of re-writable CDs. I don’t think we had re-writable DVDs in those days, and hard drives were pitifully small.

It also boasts the formidable voice talents of Katerina Athanasopoulou, and Harold Offeh, and a sound mix courtesy of De Lane Lea. Thanks guys!

Bluebeard from James Merry on Vimeo.

The ancient legend, retold through the traditional medium of second-hand television.

This was made in 2000. At the time  I was being inspired by Plunder-phonic music, specifically Negativland, and I wanted to see if I could create a visual equivalent.

It was one of my student films at the RCA, and also one of my first attempts at computer animation. Strangely enough, I didn’t use After Effects for this; I used Photoshop to create frame-by-frame animation, and then compiled it all in Premiere. The second-hand TV clips were grabbed and digitised from VHS tapes.

Ah, the comedy of naivety and inexperience.

The Quest for the Holy Grail from James Merry on Vimeo.

Check out Charlie Swinbourne and William Mager’s new film about a deaf teenager caught in-between the deaf and hearing worlds.  I think it’s great!

[Disclaimer: I made the fake animated Facebook page sequences in it, and some of the titles. And the big spinning CD at the start ]