Though Barry Purves works in stop motion and I'm personally wanting to focus on 2D, I always found his work to be extremely beautiful and well made, so I shouldn't dismiss it. For this reason, I decided to get in contact with him, and see whether he'd be able to give me some insights into his working methods. I also asked him what he thought was essential in creating a good character performance.
Luckily he got back to me, and it was interesting to find out that he doesn't actually use any reference material when animating:
Hi Lauren, and sorry to disappoint but I never use visual reference - I don't like rotoscope, which I think is cheating, and I don't like copying live action videos, as whilst they may be helping to see how things work, any live action timing is not much use to us animators as we have to emphasise the story telling moments in an action more than live action and this affects the timing. And why would we want to copy live action - animation should liberate us, allowing to have fun with movement. I do use reference when researching a subject, Tchaikovsky for example, and we did look at photographs and I went to his house. perhaps if there was a technical action like a tango or something then I might watch to see the steps but I would never copy it. To some extent the puppet tells you how it should move.
A good character performance -well make sure we can read the thought process. allow time for the thoughts to register. make sure that the puppet, above all, has good expressive eyes.
Hope this makes sense
Barry
Tchaikovsky - Barry Purves
The insights Barry provided were not just interesting, but also potentially extremely useful for progressing further with my dissertation writing. Hopefully I'll be able to bump into him at Manchester Animation Festival, to thank him properly for his time.
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