Animated Short Explores Escaping a Father’s Cycle of Hatred

In director and animator Marcus Armitage’s short film My Dad, a father’s rituals of loving behavior and violent xenophobic beliefs coexist in pastels, newspaper graphics, and audio snippets. It isn’t until his son—the film’s young narrator—parses out the world around these rituals that the family’s framework begins to physically tear and fragment.

Born in Pontefract, West Yorkshire and now London-based, Armitage made the BAFTA-nominated short as a graduation piece from the Royal College of Art, after he developed his style over a slew of previous films (School of Life, Over Dinner). Bracing, rhythmic, and at times abstract, My Dad is a natural evolution of his form and storytelling. Recently I spoke to Armitage about the layered and intensive work behind it:

Image courtesy of the artist

The Creators Project: Who or what are your go-to sources of inspiration behind your work?

Marcus Armitage: A lot of my inspiration comes from the work that was going on in the ‘80s in the animation world. Animators like Susan Young and Jonathan Hodgson, who were making beautiful films that mixed expressive drawing and color with social commentary and created a mark of that time. That's something I really pushed myself to achieve with My Dad: to create something that will signify a very specific time in history and to be told through the working together of color, movement and sound.

I love German Expressionist painting, [Ernst Ludwig] Kirchner in particular. [His] use of color and distorted figures have always been of interest to me, and that's something I try to put into the figures I animate.

What were the stages of achieving the visual style of My Dad?

I started with the oil pastel drawings. I loved using them and how I was able to get very bold colors down onto paper instantly. I wanted to create an intensity for the protest scene, and they were perfect to get the physicality across, as they were very expressive. My plan was to create three separate worlds/visual motifs so I could cut between them to build up this story of different influences. The problem I had was the protest was very colorful but I also wanted to represent the multicultural city, so I opted to have a sparse environment with a lot of negative space and lines and shapes of color to contrast against it. The newspaper clippings were great fun to use, as they had a very different texture and stood out greatly behind the oil pastel drawings, with large black letters peering through. To achieve the torn moments, I finished the drawings then tore through the paper and set up a little green screen behind the drawings so I could add the fast collage of newspapers in after effects.   How did the Stefan Wermuth photograph (from the film’s end) enter into the film?

The photograph actually came halfway through making the film. I already had the story and was starting to animate, but was also researching at the same time. I just happened to come across it online, and it summed up the whole story in one very striking image. I knew I had to use it, and that really helped me focus the rest of the film and put a strong ending together. What tool in your animation setup has progressed your storytelling technique the most?

For me, the most important thing is speed. Especially now when I have actual work to do, making your own films is very difficult, and being able to get results immediately is crucial. I used digital animation on TVPaint to animate My Dad first and then colored afterwards onto paper. This allowed me to animate very quickly and get an idea of what the film would be before I spent the time making the oil pastel drawings. It made it very efficient.

Image courtesy of the artist What's the next project that you're involved in?

At the moment I'm developing a new film, about all the angry people I've met in London and those silent moments that happen just before someone loses it. I want to do something fun for a change that will hopefully make people laugh!

Watch My Dad below:

My Dad from Marcus Armitage on Vimeo.

Click here for more of Armitage’s films and work.

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