I decided to watch as many different examples of his work as I could to really get a feel of how I could create something similar and as loose and absorbing as this myself.
The first of Breers work that I was introduced to was 'A man and his dog out for air'.
When first watching this video I literally took it as a load of lines floating around mixing, breaking, multiplying, aligning to create different images. However when I watched it again I found myself to be seeing images and finding more and more within the piece. I still can't decide if those things were put there or whether its just the brain searching for complete images. Now when I watch it I get glimpses of building, structures, letters, animals or people almost, feathers, and I find it amazing how very simple lines and very unstructured movement and drawing can represent all these different things. The only real clear image is the one at the very end of a man and his dog!
Having watched this one first I got the idea of a very experimental and quick way of working, that, with some idea of timing and music could create a really exciting piece of animation. However, I then went on and watched some more of Breers work that was a little more structured and I found even more mesmerising in the way it was filmed, its quick frames, almost shot in a completely random order but with re-occouring images that play on your mind throughout the piece.
For example in 'swiss army knife with rats and pigeons' there is a lot of changing shapes, blocks of colours and images that flash on screen over and over throughout the piece, however enlarged, overlapped, flipped, in a slightly diferent pose etc. There is quite a strong cubist link in the whole of the animation, including recognisable images, geometric shapes and blocks, symbols and lines. However there is much more colour then in the previous piece and very clear images imcluding some landscapes, people walking, portraits and even still images and photos.
I find Breers work to be about pretty much anything you want to show, or imply or anything you feel worked out onto the page. There is obviously a lot of meaning and symbolic references in his work and each animation and there is so much content and so many different ideas in each one.
From this...I want to create my own experimental piece working to the music that I have chosen and using a range of images, sequences, colours and moving shapes, combined with perhaps a few still images or images that the music reminds me of.
I'm hoping that this will enable me to losen up my drawing style and the way I think of ideas and images. To get some really rough lines and get them moving across the page and interacting with the sound without having to be a specific shape or formed into a neat character. Hopefully this will create a really interesting and different piece. I may also film the images I draw in a random order so that I get the flashing absorbing effect, particularly when the music is quite fast nearer the end of the piece I think this could work quite well.
To begin this experiment I thought it would be best to get down some images that could re-occour in the animation of what the music really represented to me. So, by listening to the music a fair few times over, I sketched out a lot of different images very quickly and roughly to get into the mood and the right mind frame to continue the animation. From these I then decided to choose the better few to have as images to work from, just as a starting block so I wasn't leaping into the drawings with no ideas of what to do.
Here are the results...
From here on, to make it really experimental I will have a range of drawing materials surrounding me, my dope sheet so I still have an undertsanding of the accents in the music and a pile of postcards to work my way through. Now hopefully, it will all come together...
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