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Est. Reading Time: 9 Minutes

MARK (M) Tell us a little about yourself - when did you become interested in film and filmmaking? And what made you particularly interested in animation?

ANGUS (A) Hello, my name is Angus Oakes! I am a self-taught experimental animator and dancer. I am currently studying Experimental Animation at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and enjoying every second of it.

I was born and raised in Colorado, in a small town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains called ‘Lyons’, which is a very artsy little town with a population of around 3,000 people. I grew up playing sports and being outside a lot of the time, which translated into a love of hip-hop dance when I was in elementary school. I stuck with it and focused on dance throughout middle and high school, performing and competing in various hip-hop dance teams multiple times every year around Colorado.

A During this time, I viewed and perceived dance as a sport more than an art form; it wasn’t until my freshman year in high school when I lived in Hong Kong for six months with my mom and dad where I found artistic meaning in dance through movement. There, I found purpose in dance beyond the notion of a ‘sport’ and more through self-expression which eventually culminated in a fascination of movement beyond the physical realm and onto a canvas. It wasn’t until my third year of high school that I fully realized my passion for movement was perfect for experimental animation. I then spent my last two years of high school learning and studying as much animation as I could, and decided I wanted to attend art school to study animation and technology. I ended up applying and getting accepted into the Experimental Animation program at CalArts, and now I am there about to begin my second year of the undergraduate program.

On Visual Style

M I love your visual style - it’s unique, playful and very elegant! I would love to learn more about your interest in blending different animation mediums and styles within your work - why are you interested in exploring and combining traditional and digital animation styles on screen? And this may be a little difficult to answer in certain respects but do you think your interest comes from specific desires (i.e challenging/subverting the language of cinema), natural playful instincts (i.e being curious and having fun), or perhaps a bit of both?

A Ever since I started teaching myself animation, I have switched a lot between learning 2D animation and 3D CG. A lot of my early animation inspiration came from envisioning the natural environments I grew up in which I would then fill with creatures and explorers traveling through them. Because of this, I was drawn to creating environments in the 3D software ‘Blender’ and then drawing and animating over the landscapes in my 2D style. I honed in on this style of filmmaking and developed an increasing interest in incorporating more mediums in ways that still felt very cohesive and purposeful.

To me, mixing mediums and style creates a lot of engagement and visual appeal in filmmaking - in a sense, if you are constantly blending mediums, the potential dullness of one will be subverted by the bizarreness of mixing it with another. Two different mediums and styles together challenge each other and reveal their characteristics in different ways. I find experimenting with this to be incredibly interesting as their differences and similarities stand out in ways that can either blend them extremely well together or not at all. Finding peculiar combinations can sometimes pay off exponentially.

A For LOTUS, I wanted to push my boundaries and explore new animation mediums to see how they interacted with what I was already accustomed to. One of those new explorations was combining stop motion-puppet animation with CG background animation. This was difficult in the sense that reality and generated reality can be confusing to watch at the same time, but I found the organic nature of a stop-motion puppet blended really nicely in a serene generated environment. In the simplest terms, though, I like exploring mediums for the simple purpose of seeing what tickles my brain. I love animation that both confuses and leaves me in awe of how it was made, so exploring this feeling within my own film is valuable to me.

On Themes

M It was interesting to learn about the powerful symbolism of lotus flowers - rebirth and resurrection are frequently associated with the lotus which tie in nicely with the themes of your film. Please tell us about your choice of using lotus flowers to explore complex and multi-faceted themes such as death, rebirth and catharsis.

A Initially, I actually had no intention of creating a lotus flower as the main subject, or any flower for that matter. In the early stages of concept development, the only thing I knew for certain was that I wanted to have a dancer puppet made of yarn. However, as I began finishing the design of the CG environment and planning different parts of the film, the style heavily leaned into a colourful garden or forest so it fitted very well to have the dancer be a flower.

A As you stated, lotus flowers are powerful symbols of rebirth and resurrection. They are known for a natural cycle of closing their leaves in the night and opening them in the day, which I wanted to mimic in my own film. In the beginning, the puppet moves slowly in darkness, then stands and dances more completely as the music crescendos and light floods the scene. Through this, I wanted the environment and puppet to interact and communicate - one calls and the other responds.

My main exploration within this film was an exploration of music, dance and animation; how three unique artistic expressions can seamlessly connect through emotion. The theme of catharsis I wanted to convey stemmed from a desire to translate what it feels like to dance and become one with the music - the moment of complete connection between body and music when both mediums become one and a powerful release of emotion occurs. The ‘arc’ of this film, after the flickering floral images when the puppet explodes and comes together again, represents this exact feeling of catharsis and connection through dance, music and animation. Lotus flowers, I feel, aid in this exploration through their iconography of strength, beauty and life, all of which I associate strongly with catharsis.

M Please tell us about your process of developing and designing the lotus flower - what is the stop-motion puppet (correct me if I’m wrong) made of? How long did it take to create the puppet? And please tell us about your approach to colour - why did you choose to show the lotus in a mix of red, orange and green colours?

A Yes! As I mentioned before, the initial concept of the stop-motion puppet for this film was not a flower, all I had really planned was a figure made of yarn. I started with a test puppet made of copper wire (which is not good for animating with) and various patterns of yarn as tests to see what I was capable of. This was the second stop-motion puppet I had ever made so I was quite inexperienced in this realm of art-making. The puppet for the film consists of an aluminum wire skeleton with SteelStik clay and heat shrink tubing for joints, which is then wrapped in bandage tape for fleshiness and yarn for style.

A The color of the puppet comes from a really awesome skein of color gradient yarn I found one day in a Michaels store. I am a big fan of vibrant and saturated reds and oranges, especially when paired with greenery, and I felt that it translated as flower petals nicely. The puppet took about one week to make including iterations of it that I scrapped due to the realization of wanting it to be a flower, which inspired me to add green felt fabric on the head to really bring together the lotus look.

‘…I found purpose in dance beyond the notion of a ‘sport’ and more through self-expression, which eventually culminated in a fascination of movement beyond the physical realm and onto a canvas’

— Angus Oakes

On Inspiration

M What are some of the films and who are some of the filmmakers that inspire you, and why?

A For this film specifically, I garnered a lot of inspiration from Allison Schulnik and Raman Djafari. The unpredictability of Schulnik’s work, especially in her film, EAGER (2014), was something I wanted to learn from and replicate in my own style. She has an incredibly keen understanding of the relationship between style, dance and music that continuously inspires the more I take in and understand her work. Her films are also just some of the most visually stunning and impressive works I have seen from a single filmmaker - the dedication and creativity is peak experimental animation.

A Raman Djafari has always been a huge inspiration, he was actually one of the first experimental filmmakers I found in high school that made me realize the art of experimental animation and its possibilities. His blending of 2D and 3D mediums is masterful, especially in his music videos (which I recommend checking out). Raman showed me the potential of stylized 3D design and how composition can be used to really emphasize the purpose and meaning of a short film. I recommend watching his short film I Want to Be the Ocean (2021) to see what I mean in this sense.

On The Future

M I know your goals might change and grow over time, but what are your current goals in filmmaking?

A Yes! I am currently starting work on a short experimental film with a film group in Colorado as an animator. The film will be a mix of live-action and animation, and is based on a folktale about a gnome who lives deep in a forest and turns lost souls into trees. It won’t be out for a while, but if you are interested in being updated with production and behind-the-scenes, follow my Instagram page here.

I will also shortly be starting my second year at CalArts, which means I will be starting my second year film soon. I have nothing to share about it at the moment, but it will be another short experimental production coming out next year in May. Thank you for the interview Mark!

Mark’s Final Thoughts

• Angus makes insightful points about the benefits of incorporating and blending different animation styles and techniques - using the strengths of one style to somewhat counter and offset the weaker aspects of another is clever, resourceful and will generally lead to greater depth and nuance on screen.

  Tags Animation Bourgeon Death Experimental

Want to Learn More? Click here for insight into Angus’s process of crafting the film’s seamless visual style as well as his interest in creating projects that infuse 3D backgrounds with 2D hand-drawn characters.

The founder of Hommage, Mark Shaba published this interview on 13.09.2022. Mark is a filmmaker from Victoria, Australia. He respectfully acknowledges the past and present traditional owners of the land on which he creates, promotes and screens art, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation who are the custodians.