Image on left is a scene of my bear characters on a day out to the beach from my portfolio page. Its a way of working that allows me to develop characters from sketches and drawings in my notebooks. These bears are a mix of actual observational sketches of kids and people (by the seaside or poolside) mixed with character drawings 'created' from a knitted teddy I bought in a Tea Shop in Yorkshire last year (I actually bought 2)! Heres a link to one of the original bears on my instagram.
Below are some of the rough sketches from my notebooks...
What I want to talk about though is how I have been re-looking at David McKee's Mr Benn stories as inspiration for setting scenes for my characters. If you don't know Mr Benn you're in for a treat! (link to documentary on youtube here). Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered a clumpy panning technique used to animate the scenes in the series. It is confirmed in this article from Creative Review (2017) and by McKee himself in the aforementioned documentary...
McKee worked alongside his assistant Ian Lawless to create the films. “I would draw it mostly, and then he would colour it. Some scenes I would colour as well, but it was not done in the machine. It was very time-consuming and a lot of drawings. I did a lot of detailed drawings and used a lot of camera movement. There’s lots of pans and zooms and quick cuts.”
For me, as someone who is developing a new creative voice, it is useful to study McKee's approach, in which many narratives have the potential to be developed further beyond each scene. By setting these everyday observational scenes he allows for many potential stories to unfold...
I love the women stopped for some gossip in this one! (And the dog has given up on his walk). This one scene has so much movement and action going on. McKee said that he set Mr Benn in no. 54, next door to no. 52 where he himself lived (the artist has even placed himself in the upstairs window of the house next door in this spread). This 'still' is from the article in Creative Review. (McKee explained that he threw away a lot of the original artworks that he considered as process drawings - that the final work was the Tv programme)!
All Images Copyright David McKee or S. Timmons 2023