Popular and successful Norfolk Animator Ian Harding is keeping an old art form and tradition that brought us Wallace and Grommit alive by teaching his skills to an enthusiastic younger generation.
Ian Harding is running his next Stop Motion Animation course on December 17th at the College of West Anglia.
In a world in which AI and CGI are hailed as the technological future one man from Norfolk is keeping a form of animation that brought us the likes of Wallace and Grommit, the Klangers and Morph alive and is seeing his animated stories going from strength to strength through the medium of You Tube.
Kings Lynn based Animator Ian Harding, the creator of Zey the mouse is a fanatical advocate for the Stop-motion techniques that gave us so many classic creations from the past and he loves to pass his knowledge on through courses and his enthusiasm to make sure that the art form will survive for years to come.
‘Keeping an old art form and medium alive, passing on the knowledge, and seeing a new generation exploring and creating their own projects is great, and very heart-warming’ said Ian.
Ian who has run courses in animation at the College of West Norfolk in his native Kings Lynn spent 2 years volunteering at Norwich Puppet theatre from 2009 to 2011 during which time he made some of his initial films, but it was in early 2012 taking inspiration from the likes of the classic animated programmes Trap Door, Postman Pat and of course Wallace and Grommit that he produced the first of his Zey the Mouse animations and set up Harding productions.
Now almost 14 years later he is on to the 11th episode in the series that has seen Zey variously go out into space, back in time and in a recent streetwise episode learn to skate at a skate-park among other things.
As well as creating Zey and his fellow characters Ian loves building the film sets utilising wood, paper, card and wire mesh to do so.
The interest in his work is such that in one week one of his courses at the Forum in Norwich attracted 2,488 visitors, during which children were able to create their own characters and learn the basics of animation in an afternoon.
Equally his Zey series of animations have now had almost 48,000 youtube views. It is a painstaking process to create each episode which as Ian says ‘can take up to a year to produce an episode resulting in long nights and careful movements one step at a time’. ‘It’s a passion close to my heart and when my mind is filled with lots of creative ideas its great to put pen to paper’ Ian added. He also likes the fact that his courses give young people the chance to switch the computer off and work with something physical.
However it is not totally a one man operation in creating Zey as he enlisted Jonathan Smith to write the scripts for Zey which Ian brings to life, and he is joined in providing the voices for his characters by Ross Patterson.
Ian’s work has been shown at BBC film festivals, on tv and in theatres, while he has been featured in many newspapers and magazines and interviewed on the radio over the course of the last decade. When asked what his dream would be he replied ‘to work alongside Aardman productions’.
In the meantime Ian is currently busy working on the 11th Zey episode and remains for the moment tight lipped about what adventures Zey will be getting up to in the latest incarnation which he hopes will be completed before Christmas. If it isn’t such is his enthusiasm we wouldn’t be surprised if when most people are unwrapping their presents or tucking into their Christmas meal one man from Kings Lynn will be spending the day creating and filming the adventures of Zey the mouse one step and frame at a time ready for eager children far and wide to watch and find out what he has been up to in the latest instalment, and maybe, just maybe some of them will go on to be animators in the future keeping, as Ian hopes, the art form and medium alive.
Here are some YouTube Links to episodes 7 and 8
Zey Episode 7 ‘The Time Machine’, Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8V-SUE98M4
Zey Episode 9 ‘Visitor’s from Space’, Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bvDX2jXwbE
