Donnacha Clarke
A handmade autobiographical love letter to the seagull who kept me company over the lonely years of chronic illness. A mixed media solo project involving claymation, sticky notes, oil pastels, collage, photocopied video animation and animation of found materials (dried leaves, flowers, plants, texts) all shot under a multiplane camera setup.
My main objective for 'Gullermo' was to gently reintroduce myself into the filmmaking and animation process after a long medical deferral. I wanted to create a self-contained solo project that was both manageable with my disability and fun to create. I have always been most engaged by the tactile process of analog and experimental animation - my original grad film proposal in 2020, about revolutionary opossums, was storyboarded entirely on sticky notes and animated on a lightbox in sand animation. While the idea was too ambitious to return to, I wanted to carry through what I found most engaging about it: the process of animating loosely and intuitively in response to the physical medium used. Sticky notes have remained my primary canvas due to their modularity, versatility and thinness for animating on, so they had to make an appearance in 'Gullermo' too!
Thematically I wanted to create a personal narrative, the authenticity of which would be reflected by the scrappy and tactile quality of the animation. Many animals have helped me through difficult years - but Gullermo the lesser black-backed gull struck me as the most appealing to animate, with his telescopic neck, beady eyes and enigmatic seasonal arrival and departure.
I created the film through a patchwork of stopmotion techniques intended to give the film a scrapbook quality. I began by collecting, pressing and animating fallen autumn leaves under camera, moving to fresher spring foliage as the narrative goes on to reflect the seasonal change that underscores the film. I created some scenes in claymation with plasticine puppets and then moved to mixed-media animation where I printed my phone footage of the real Gullermo, drew on it, and rescanned it into animated sequences. The film also features animation on sticky notes and relevant texts with oil pastels, inks and colouring pencils. My narration is central to the piece, and I wanted it to appear on screen as I spoke. I used a multiplane camera setup to animate word tiles moving frame by frame under camera alongside my animation.
'Gullermo' is a deeply autobiographical narrative that explores the passage of time over chronic illness through the lens of the animal. The authenticity and emotional honesty of the narration is reflected and enhanced by the tactile and undeniably handmade quality of the animation. Rather than having my narrative dwell on what made life difficult over my housebound years, I wanted it to be a tender and silly celebration of what helped me to keep going: having a window and a connection to the natural world. I hope the finished piece reflects the love, joy and fun that went into its creation.
The creation and consumption of comics focused on the experiences of living
with mental illness have proliferated throughout the history of comics. These comics
often serve a dual purpose of allowing the artist to understand their experience
through the narrativization process, as well as offering a sense of connection with
their audience. This thesis investigates the use of comics as a medium for
autobiography about mental illness with reference to a selection of English language
autobiographical comics and graphic memoirs, with a focus on those whose visual
and textual style and tone switches between serious and humorous registers
throughout. The seminal work of Justin Green in Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin
Mary (1972) will be considered in this context, followed by discussion of Allie
Brosh’s webcomic turned bestseller Hyperbole and a Half (2013) and finally the
graphic novel It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth (2022) by Zoe Thorogood. The
analysis will focus on the texts’ representations of the self, truth, humour and the
possibility of catharsis through autography about mental illness.
I am a compulsive doodler who can be found wherever words and images combine. My practice involves excavating and exploring emotion and lived experience through the playful use of physical media. My thesis film 'Gullermo' is a stopmotion mixed media love letter to a seagull who came to my window and kept me company while housebound with chronic illness. My interests lie in analog animation, comics, illustration, writing and poetry.
