Grant Orchard
	Grant Orchard’s series LOVESPORT is featured in our October 2007 showcase. We took a Friday afternoon to chat with Grant about his solo show, his life until now, and his thoughts on the future. LUMEN ECLIPSE: So, Grant, can you give fill us in on your background? Where are you from, where did you go to school? GRANT ORCHARD: Well, I’m from London, and I went to study in Scotland for a couple of years, and then I went down to the only animation course in the UK at the time, which was at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design. I did a full-time animation course in 1995. And then I graduated from there and I got a running job – I don’t know if you call it that in the States, but a running job is basically just a go-for [ed: internship] – at a place called Pizazz Pictures, which later turned out to become StudioAKA. So, I’ve kind of been at StudioAKA for over 10 years now. I took a few years out to make a few short films, including Welcome to Glaringly, which was commissioned by Channel4, and then another one which was just done while I was freelancing in between work, which was Park Foot Ball. I then went back to StudioAKA, and we just carried on working together, and then about a year ago we got commissioned by Qoob to make LOVESPORT. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Did you always want to be an animator? Did you get a lot of flack for wanting to be an artist? GRANT ORCHARD: Oh, no! Academically I wasn’t very wise, wasn’t very sharp, and I was in remedial school for quite a long time. Art was the only thing I was good at. It’s what my parents put most of their energy into, you know getting me set up with art equipment at home and stuff like that, so I was well catered for. Basically it was the only thing I ever thought I could do, something arts-based. But I didn’t realize at first that you could really do an animation job, that they were out there. You don’t know how it’s done, and it’s quite magical when you’re younger. It seemed the only animation jobs were at Disney – it was quite abstract, it was never tangible. It was for people who were extraordinarily good, and extraordinarily talented, and very far away, usually in the States. And then when I was about 15 or 16, there was a whole screening on Channel 4 called ‘Fourmations,’ which was a series showing short animated films from around the world, like the Quay Brothers, Stuart Hilton was there as well…all these new films, like Mark Baker ‘The Hill Farm’, these films I never really got to see before. They had interviews with the animators in their studios, and they admitted that sometimes they didn’t know what they were doing, and they showed you their work in progress and it wasn’t perfect, and it became ‘Maybe I can do something like this, this might be on.’ So, I went to art college and did graphic design, but then I kept doing sequential kinds of artwork, almost like comic strips, and my graphic design teacher suggested animation, told me there was an animation course in Surrey, and in a kind of way chucked me off graphic design and encouraged me to go do animation, which I did. LUMEN ECLIPSE: What styles of animation did you learn at school? Anything computer-based back then? GRANT ORCHARD: Well, computers were…I think for people who were brave enough, or had some kind of previous experience with computers, they were trying. But I think there were 2000-odd people at SIAD (Surrey Institure for Art & Design), but there were only about 9 or 10 computers to go round. So it wasn’t really a possibility. So it was 2-D that I stuck with, shooting stuff under the Rostrum camera. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Now you seem quite versatile. You do a commercial here, or a music video here, you make a short film, and you use a lot of different styles. Do you prefer one form over another? GRANT ORCHARD: I like doing them all. The variety is always good, it’s always interesting, and it’s very easy to get pigeon-holed in what you do. When it comes to commercial work you can kind of get stuck in a bit of a rut. So if you have an opportunity to do something outside of the commercial field, something a bit different, it’s probably a wise idea. Also, it’s just more interesting that way. About the only thing I don’t do is stop-motion. I’m just kind of…not going there. I mean, all animation is fairly laborious, but that is really just something else. So I mostly stick to 2D and CG. LUMEN ECLIPSE: In terms of screens and physical space, where do you most like to see your work shown? What kind of screens are you making your work for? GRANT ORCHARD: It’s weird, for a long time I always judged my work by how it looked on a TV, because I did commercials for 6 years before I ever did any independent work that would have been screened at festivals. Some commercials got screened at festivals, but the majority of the time you were doing it for TV, and how it looked on TV was what you were aiming for. But now, well I think it is still TV really, a widescreen TV – I think we’ve been doing widescreen here for about 4 or 5 years. But a lot of times, for example with the LOVESPORT series, the only place you can see it at the moment is on the internet, and it’s really bad quality, and the characters are already really small. I kind of worried about it for a while, and then I thought I can’t worry about it too much. I can’t let the platform dictate how I’m going to do it. And although ultimately I want it to be shown on bigger platforms, I didn’t pay too much attention to the fact that it was going to be – that it was going to break down quite as much as it did on the net. But I think it’s still legible, and people are still going to get it, which is good. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Where do you think animation will be in 20 years? Where will you be in 20 years? GRANT ORCHARD: Well, animation, you always think it’s going to head somewhere unknown, and then it almost takes a retrogressive step. Everyone was on the CG bandwagon and all commercials—you saw 2D kind of slow down, and then stop motion almost died a death. And then suddenly there’s loads of stop motion, there’s loads of hand-drawn, and really kind of raggedy hand-drawn. I think if you look on Youtube at the moment there’s loads of flipbooks going on, there’s loads of stop motion work going on, and it seems the rougher the better, you know. It’s taken on a whole kind of look and feel for itself, almost a craft like feel, rather than being too digital. And I think at the moment people really want that, but it does feel like a fashion, and like all fashions they change. So I think it’s really going to keep kind of bouncing off each other, it’s like a yoyo almost. But in 20 years time, what I’m doing, well I don’t know. I’ll still be in animation, I still really love it. LUMEN ECLIPSE: What’s working at studio aka like? GRANT ORCHARD: It’s really good! It’s really varied. At the moment, well it’s very busy commercially, and when it’s very busy commercially you enjoy it for the first month and then you go, ‘God this is really tiresome, and I kind of want to do my own work again.’ And then another month it might kind of slow down so you do get to do your own work again, but then you kind of think, ‘wow, I like the enforced pressure of doing that commercial work, those really tight deadlines,’ and then you think, actually I wouldn’t mind doing a commercial again.’ LUMEN ECLIPSE: About LOVESPORT, and those colored block-people. Are they pixels? Is there a reference to video games or an old technology, or are they just a simple shape? GRANT ORCHARD: No, it was never meant to be a reference to old video games, it just came up because I – well I did Park Foot Ball in AfterEffects, and it was my way of learning how to do AfterEffects: instead of doing an intricately-designed character, I thought I’d just learn how to animate and move things in AfterEffects with a block, and I started moving it and drew another block, and I thought huh, kind of looks like people running around at a distance, and I threw a football in there, and that’s how I started the film. So, you know, it was a style based on a lazy way of experimenting with a piece of software. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Yeah, well you know they’re really quite expressive, I was very impressed by how expressive you could get these colored rectangles to be. GRANT ORCHARD: Yeah, well there were always these old 2D tests, they were called sack tests – what they did was they got a sack, which is just a rectangle again, and they made it look sad or they made it look happy. It was supposed to be half-full of flour, so it’s an exercise in weight, and trying to get personality out of a quite simple object by taking poses to certain extremes. It’s an old Disney test, and I think there’s a whole history of trying to simplify things, and trying to get emotion out of simple objects through animation. It’s a bit of a challenge, and animators really like that. LUMEN ECLIPSE: What’s up with all of LOVESPORT’s tragedies and triumphs? GRANT ORCHARD: Oh, you know, comedy is pain and all that kind of malarkey. I don’t overly analyze the funny things, or the things that are painful or disastrous. I think it’s just kind of innately programmed into us to laugh at stuff like that, and I find it funny, and therefore I’ve animated it. Cheap laughs! LUMEN ECLIPSE: What are you working on now? GRANT ORCHARD: I just finished off a whole load of commercials – actually, also based on shapes, for a health care company in Britain. And they’re all circles, so that’s been quite nice. (laughs) And then I’m going to be working on a film called Natural History, which I’m trying to get off the ground, which is hopefully all going to be done in watercolors, so that’s a complete departure for me. I’m working with an artist on that. So I’m just seeing if I can get funding. That’s work in development. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Can you tell me 2 truths and a lie? You tell me three things, and I have to figure out which are true and which one isn’t. GRANT ORCHARD: Oh, ok. My grandfather was a great white hunter. I’m a trained scout. And…I’ve danced with wolves. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Very tricky. What about any recommendations for our readers? GRANT ORCHARD: Sure, currently I’m enjoying reading Will Self’s Book of Dave, which is a story of a society in the future built on the mad ranting of a London cabbie. He also wrote Great Apes and How the Dead Live. He’s a wildly, brilliantly imaginative writer. And I’m listening to a band called Beirut at the moment. They’re trying their hand at Eastern European folk –very addictive. I’m also enjoying too many homemade chicken escalopes and also far too many Peanut Butter Chunky Kit-Kats. You might not have them in America. But they’re incredibly tasty.