Hi everyone, welcome to my humble web-abode. Come in, come in! Pull up a chair, grab a woolly blanket, and a big old steaming mug of cocoa and let Aunty Lydia take you on a marvellous journey into the inner workings of her animator's mind!

Well now that I've said that I'm not sure how to live up those expectations... I've never had any practise with blogging but I'm sure I can find a few things to start rambling about (it is after all my forte).

So! Our first blog is to be about what inspires us in animation. I've only just recently decided I wanted to get into animation so I'm still not familiar with a lot of movies and animators names that I've heard thrown about the classroom. But I know what I do like, and what I tend to be drawn to.

And I suppose the best place to start with I'm drawn to, is the one sort of character that gets me everytime- the shy, reluctant hero. Whatever book/ movie he's in, I find myself instantly magnatised to him and falling in love within seconds. Some good examples of what sort of character I'm talking about are the mute Cobbler from 'The Princess and the Cobbler', Edward Scissorhands, and Victor from 'The Corpse Bride'. I love their innocence and naivety, and how no-one else seems to understand them. If you haven't already, go and read 'The Little Prince' by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The Prince is the perfect example of everything I love about this sort of character! Seriously, it's such a beautiful book, it'll only take you half an hour or so... so go read it. Now. Go on, scoot!

WAIT! Not until you've finished reading my blog that is.. ;-)
The reason I started with my favourite type of character is because nearly everything I like revolves around him in one way or another. I'm drawn to Tim Burton's works because he seems to have a similar inclination to such characters and a certain sympathy towards them. And his visuals are just stunning- the lone Jack Skellington walking down a curling hill into a pumpkin-strewn graveyard, backlit by a an enormous yellow moon. Sigh! Perfection.

And the Princess and the Cobbler has got to be one of the saddest losses to animation in history. Sure, we got a 'complete' version in the end (after the new director had taken over and hacked it to pieces, then patched it up again with cheap asian labour to make it marketable). But to think what kind of masterpiece it may have been, had Richard Williams been allowed to continue working on it and completed it to his original intended quality- no matter how many deadlines he missed or how over-budget he went- would have been just mind-boggling.
He had some of the best animators in history working on it, the characters and scenery were all hand-drawn and so deliciously intricate. All in the days before new-fangled computer animation. And animated on ones too! Like I said, mind-boggling.
I'll see if I can fish out some decent youtube links to it. Once you've seen it, you'll understand.

Another animated fave of mine is Daria. It's so simple, yet packs a brilliant punch! Quinn is by far my favourite character, the perfect stereotypical snob with her Fashion Club minions. And Britney would have to come a close second. That what I love about that show, every cliched character is explored and given a story, and all the way through it you find yourself thinking, 'Oh my god, I knew someone like that! That's exactly what they sound like!'

Well that should about do it for now. Still have to look into how to link clips to this thing... technology and I haven't been on speaking terms for a while now.

Anyway, stay tuned... My stores of rambling have been depleted. But not for long..