Virtually There

“How you move through it has changed”

Jay is thrown from the treadmill of urban life into a place where time expands & space contracts. In the stillness, he re-finds himself & his place in the world. After a month of lockdown, the Nude Triumphant narrative seems strangely prescient…

After the initial panic of cancelled events and an uncertain future, we quickly adjusted to a new way of working. April began with our first virtual painting session, where Leo and Maya created a sequence of images for the character of Emm by live video link. Leo also got together with Roy to paint some more poses for Jay, but as they live together, they could do this happily in the flesh.

We were able to work with The Latest and Brighton Fringe Festival to find a new date for the Starkers Academy Ball, our launch event for Nude Triumphant. All being well, this will now happen on Sunday 4 October during the rescheduled festival. We still plan to finish the animation next month (May), submit to festivals and be ready for a bumper autumn of screenings, workshops and events. In the meantime, we have lined up the Nude Triumphant exhibition at West Norwood Library & Picturehouse (July to October), showcasing artwork of Haemin Ko and Leo Crane respectively. Both exhibitions will be free. We hope restrictions will have lifted enough by then to allow people to visit in real life, but if not, they will find a place online. Follow these and other exhibition events here.

All through April we have been constantly streamlining and sharpening various aspects of the film, assessing what needs the most love, and coming together on video to hash out creative decisions. Over half the paintings is now complete: a huge number of hand-painted watercolours by Haemin Ko, Leo Crane and Aaron Jacob Jones. Patrick and Leo have been busy digitising, animating and compositing them into the main edit.

A selection of Leo’s paintings of model Matthew Oghene.

Besides the visuals, the other biggest consideration right now is how it all sounds. Sound design is such a crucial and intricate part of animated filmmaking, with every sound designed and created along with the visual frames. We’ve completed the voiceovers and have a good idea of the music, thanks to composer Andrew Hayes. We are now thinking about sound design and how all the different parts will interlock and play together. Leo, Andrew, Patrick and sound designer Andy Humphreys met over a video call to discuss how it will develop from here.

Finally, we’ll leave you with this short interview with Leo, published by The Hepworth Wakefield. In it, he talks about his inspirations, process and of course Nude Triumphant.