If I'm ever in a meeting, or seminar, or conference -- anywhere where people are standing up and talking to some other people -- I have the overwhelming and unstoppable urge to doodle.  The minute someone starts speaking, I pick up my pen or pencil and I don't put it down again until they stop.  I don't mean to be disrespectful, as I really am listening to every word that is being said, but there is something about half-paying attention to both activities which makes each a more rewarding experience.  

I tend to think too much when I draw normally (I tend to think too much in general, but there you go).  So when my mind is even vaguely distracted from the activity by something else, I draw so much better; I'm looser, more inventive, and do more unpredictable things with my pen.  I'm convinced I'm also a better listener at the same time as I'm doodling, but I have no solid proof of this.  Anyway, people tend to get a bit funny when I'm furiously sketching away as they're making important points, but I just can't help myself.

These are a few of the sketches I did during a work conference a year or so back; there were some very strong, stern faced women in attendance, who I couldn't get enough of.  I started out drawing quite representationally but it soon tipped over into the fanciful.  There was a mezzanine floor and some people were leaning over the balcony, which made me think of passengers on a ship as it sails out of port, so I couldn't resist putting some sea breeze in their hair.  In fact, after a while I started drawing people not just as they appeared to be, but how I imagined they felt inside (hence the bald-headed man's scream into the abyss, above).  I'm afraid it might disprove my theory that drawing makes me a good listener if I admit I can't remember at all what the conference was about.  I'm sure it was very interesting and important though.

I love how changing to a different drawing tool makes it feel almost like your hand isn't your own, and the marks you make are all the more exciting for it...

I picked up this pen a while back, after forgetting about it for a couple of years, and had an immediate positive response; it has a very flexible brush-like tip that is able to make a variety of very diverse and pleasing lines.  I went a bit OCD with it for a few minutes, just enjoying the feeling of making these repetitive, inky shapes:

The strength of the lines reminded me of monoprints or lino cuts.   I also liked how the unfamiliarity of it led me to draw figures and faces in a way I wouldn't have done with a more familiar pen:

As ever, it gave me a great idea for an inky, brush work animation that will be far too labour intensive and time consuming to ever actually do... one more for the great Ideas Graveyard in my head :)

I recently went through the sketchbooks I kept in my third year of my Media and Communications degree in 2005, when I was working on my final animation piece, Baobab; this project heralded a period of productivity the like of which I haven't enjoyed before or since, and until I started looking through it all I'd forgotten how much actual drawing I did at that time.  

I drew pretty much every minute of the day; I drew on the bus on the way to Uni, I drew in my theory lectures and in the seminars.  I drew in the cinema and, famously, in the pub during someone's birthday celebrations.  I drew so much that I managed to convince my long suffering partner that, due to the drawing, I wouldn't be able to help out around the house any more, so he cooked and cleaned and washed the clothes and changed the sheets for pretty much the entire term. While I drew.

The drawing was very necessary, as I'd decided from the start that this film wasn't going to be highly planned and storyboarded in the way the animation process usually demands, but that I was instead going to try and work as immediately and intuitively as possible; I had no idea where my drawing was going to take me, but had to trust that something cohesive would emerge from the random scenes, figures and mark making I was churning out.  I tried not to think too much about it, especially as I had decided to take as a starting point my feelings about the South African Truth and Reconciliation hearings (my family is South African), and I wanted what came forth to be as much of an unconscious outpouring as was possible given the restrictions of the medium.  I was interested to see how responsive something as normally time consuming and organised as animation could be, and how it might be used in as expressive and dynamic a way as painting onto canvas.  Another pressure was that I was very mindful of the fact that my time as a student was coming to an end, and I had a huge urge to fit in as much as possible before it all melted away and I was forced to confront the real world again. I think it was this anxiety that really propelled me forward (and literally animated me!) rather than any nobler academic interrogation...

So here are just a few pages from those sketchbooks -- two in all, and I've posted these sequentially from the first to the last -- which, when added to the 800+ individual drawings I shot for the actual film, amounts to a hefty bit of work.  I find it interesting that even though they never appeared directly in the animation, every single one of these marks I drew contributed in some way to the end result, and in most cases I can identify almost exactly how; the decision to use ink here or chalk there, whether to include a figure drawn this way or that, which shapes to create or expressions to include, all came from the enquiries I made with these drawings.  

While the film that eventually emerged from all this work is certainly no masterpiece (although I'm pleased with the technical elements, and, obviously, the drawings...) it's a great reminder that creativity is not always about the end result, but the continuing process.  So this will always be the most important film I ever make.  Because it was the start of everything.

And here's the film itself: