Silent Valour

1995 to 1996 - Computer generated 2D animation and a variety of mixed techniques

This was my 18 minute space epic. A personal pet project, this time, that I started as a series of experiments and I decided to expand upon. I actually had a plan for this one. I roughed out a simple storyline, chose some music and planned what would happen and when to the timings of the music. I was still pretty much making it up as I went along, but there was no opportunity to just get bored and give up here. This had a beginning and an end, and since I couldn't edit the music down (no video editing software) I was tied to a certain amount of screen time. I have no idea how I managed to plan for 18 minutes, I must have been mad! I think it was just because I loved the music too much, and I couldn't bear to miss out on using some of it. "The Fool!" I hear you cry. Indeed, I was, and as the project progressed an obvious deadline began to loom over my head. I was approaching the time to start taking interviews for animation courses, so I decided to finish this in time for that. I used every trick I'd gathered, and did most of the work in the DOS software I'd learned to master. I got hold of a small hand scanner and even did my first pieces of traditional 2D animation (absolutely terrible!), for the lead characters. I had no time to design new characters so I plucked out some old animal characters I'd done as a kid and put them in all the roles I needed. They added that extra star value as far as my family were concerned! I got an ancient VHS recorder (top loader!) and used that to string together the two minute chunks that my (ancient) PC was capable of playing in one go. Then got my friends around and dubbed all the voices onto the mono track (the music took the stereo tracks). There were some hilarious performances, mostly unintentional! The VHS deck had a stereo/mono mix switch so I used that to mix the sound track with the music. I seem to remember using a computer game's sound select screen to play all the sci-fi sound effects I needed. There were unwanted gaps in-between each of the two minute chunks but I took it to my first interview (Farnham institute for Art and Design\SIAD or what ever they call themselves now), and got the placement... easy. Next! ... I realized that I'd been doing Silent Valour for so long (on the side) that it had consumed all my evenings for 10 months. My longest project yet, these days I pray for a project that short! A sequel was planned with the co-operation of my friend Dave but it never got out of the planning stages as we had to finish our course work and get our Diplomas. I walked away with a Distinction, which was pretty good when you consider how rebellious I'd been to their curriculum.