W+K began to feel really Christmassy yesterday with a screening of Raymond Brigg’s The Snowman and a talk from one of it’s original animators Joanna Harrison. Joanna, who is the mother of one of our Platformers, had previously worked with W+K as an animator on the We Have Band video with her daughter Katie. The Platformers decorated the space with hundreds of handmade snowflakes and projected Yuki's interactive snowflake which responds to sound.
...and then as if by magic, it even began to snow.
Joanna introduced the film with anecdotes of continuity mistakes (note the motorbike covered in snow on one scene and without snow the next) and how when given the book by Raymond Brigg’s to produce a 20 minute animated film for Channel 4, they had no idea of what it would mean for generations to come. Joanna and her partner Hilary wrote in the scenes where The Snowman and James (named after Joanna’s husband) fly to the North Pole to meet Father Christmas which was not in the original book. She also directed the ‘bedroom scene’ where The Snowman puts on false teeth – referenced from Joanna’s great Grandma's and trousers which belonged to her husband at the time.
After a very weepy ending, everyone gathered round to see original cels and backgrounds. Joanna also brought cels from The Yellow Submarine and explained that when she started working at TVC her first job was to throw away all the old artwork from the film!
At 12 frames a second, the amount of work and beautiful craftsmanship that went into the making of this film, is what makes it so special. And that is why there will never be anything quite like The Snowman, and hopefully it will continue to make us feel that bit more Christmassy for years to come.
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