My Norway

Edinburgh is fiddly, I feel like Slartibartfast with his fjords.

The Beginning

The first stage for creating backgrounds for this film is to lay down the black ink. The under-drawing was done in pencil and traced through using pen and paintbrush on a lightbox.

The Animatic

Our rough draft of the film. A great help for planning as it serves many purposes; to communicate something of what the final film will be, as a reminder of the vision we began with and to begin to nail down big creative decisions like pace and colour.

Uniquely this early draft also contains an early version of the score and we are lucky enough to move forward with the music already sketched out.

Red Woman

A slightly fleshed out Red Woman. Hopefully they will all look individual, but what they will all have in common is a glint of torchlight in their eyes and a great white smile against their red skin.

The Real Thing

I think I was fortunate to miss Beltane 2011, the festival that provides the main inspiration for the film. Sometimes the subject is so interesting in itself that imposing your own point of view onto it would seem to diminish it. By keeping my distance, I hope I will be able to communicate the spirit of what I remember, whilst not being slavishly descriptive. Above are a selection of the amazing photography available from the festival's website.

Anatomy Lessons

For those curious about what is going on under a blue man's kilt.