Frank Gudmundsson

I’ve been working with animation since I was a child. A medium to create visual stories.

I’ve viewed it from a filmmaker's perspective rather than an artist's. There needs to be a distinction between film and art. The artist can use film, but is seeking something else. I started with film and now find myself balancing on the borderlands, not daring to leap in any direction.

The word animation comes from the Latin “animatio,” meaning “a soul,” and “animare,” meaning “to give life.” In modern terms, it is a technique where static images or objects are shown in quick succession to create the illusion of movement. Creating an animation, to animate, is a long process that requires patience and time. It is a technique of irreconcilable differences.

1.    Partly in the creative process. By manipulating the still images, something living is eventually created. It is in the movement (playback) that animation occurs, but the work is isolated in the still image. It is in the still, isolated image that the animator exists; frozen in the step between the previous and next image.

2.    Also, in the most fundamental nature of animation: to ‘give life’ to lifeless objects, to imitate the expression of the soul in soulless things, there lies an irreconcilable contradiction. Unlike Gepetto, the animator cannot give the image, puppet, or sculpture a true, living life. The most it can hope for is to make the imitation convincing enough.

Animation exists in the borderland between these. To work in the frozen moment towards the moving image, to imitate life in the lifeless body. Moreover, animation, where one minute can require several days of intense work and preparation, is a time-consuming medium. In this process, and in these irreconcilable contrasts, I have found that the best way for me to work is to be spontaneous. It is in the movement of the hand that life emerges, the genuine expression. The image is still, but my hand moves, without thought, completely detached from the brain. The only thing it knows is where the image wants to move, where the body under the camera must pull itself, how the frozen image should wander. My face grimaces, searching for the emotion that should be transferred to the character through the hand.

Since the end of my first year, I have been searching for an expression in animation that fits me. One that I feel speaks and expresses what I want, and that is less time-consuming. I am still searching. The process has, in every round, been a step forward, a step backward. But with each failed attempt, I have learned something new.

Animation should not try to mimic feature films; it must convey something more. Photorealistic paintings are impressive, but they are not interesting. Just as painting uses space, a canvas with four corners and space between, film uses time. Time is a tool, but time does not exist in practice in animation, only the spaces between time.

I have taken to animation as an experimental medium. One that looks inward at itself, where the distortion of time is a central part, a fact that the film itself seeks to highlight. Where the world of animation and our own are placed against each other. Or a way to explore the expression of the body. The body’s movements, exaggerated faces, emotions beneath the skin.