Body Paint-Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel

This was probably my first encounter with Body Paint Animation. The Sledgehammer music video was released in 1986 and it was really ground breaking in its eclectic use of props, scenes and style. I really liked the way Peter’s face was slowly painted over in blue and then clouds drift across giving us a clue that he is actually part of the sky. There was something very pleasing about this blend of body and environment and so I began to think of how I could build on my initial hand experiment (see seashore post).  Peter’s production incorporates a lot of different mediums as well as the Body Paint house style which encouraged me to experiment with different ideas of how to enhance my animation.

I found it very interesting to observe how jerky all of the movements were in the animation of his face - if they had done a lot more frames per second it would have been much smoother to view but would lose a lot of appeal – it would just look filmed and lose its relationship with the rhythm of the music which it was, in its timing, greatly enhancing.

In my “Final Piece” post, you can see how I have incorporated props with my Body Paint then enhanced them with Claymation to create appeal in my animation.