Month: June 2020

I am going through a moment of introspection; I have been thinking about my childhood a lot and trying to figure out a bit of the madness of today. In doing so, I remembered about the great set designer, artist and animator Lele Luttazzi. When I was just 8, I was lucky enough to meet him at a stop motion workshop, in my home town in Italy. I remember creating a magpie made of paper cut outs coloured with pastels that we then animated, it was very basic animation obviously.

My favourite animation amongst his production is without any doubt the Academy Award nominated movie “Pulcinella”. What truly gets me about this piece is its clear anarchic and anti-authoritarian message. Pulcinella is pissing onto an equestrian monument and is therefore chased by the “Carabinieri”. Ultimately he manages to escape and goes back to pissing on the monument but this time flowers and colours are exploding form every corner. Today’s images of colonialist statues getting torn down echoes Pulcinella’s bravadoes my mind from far away.

This is a tautological post, a meta-post, a post about a post. Sometimes its good to stop and think about what we do from the outside. This is a brief post about the last two years of my life at CSM. Before joining the Master’s in Character Animation I had miserable jobs for several years; mainly slaving away for rich art collectors. I thought that was my life, I thought that was it. I went through the whole process of hating my job, getting depressed, getting fired… blah, blah, blah.

I realised I had to try to go back to my roots and do something that allowed me to express myself creatively, so I want back to uni. It was the best thing I did since moving to London in 2012. The course was such a pivotal learning experience. Besides learning the foundations of character animation, I developed my work through an array of mediums and techniques. This has brought up skills in me that I would not have been aware of, had I not had the chance to develop them.

Lastly, this blog has helped me to become aware of my own voice. I hope that the tone I have set on this platform has not been too personal from time to time but I now, finally feel that I have the chance to express myself wholly with this new creative freedom. Therefore, all of my projects, have some reference to my life and my experiences that have brought me to where I stand today.