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Claymation sensation

You may not have heard of first year History student Richard Keen yet, but he’s just won an Oscar – sorry, make than an Oxcar – at the Oxford Film Festival. His stop-motion animation series Herman and Harold, depicting the adventures of two rather strange friends, is rapidly gaining an enthusiastic fanbase. So far we have seen them in their lounge, outside in the snow, and most recently being chased by a mummy in an Egyptian tomb. How did it all start?

“It was procrastination really,” Richard says, laughing. “I started with filming lego.” He admits a fixation since childhood. A few years ago, he decided that the little plastic men just weren’t malleable enough for his purposes, and the first version of Herman was created – a cardboard figure with a ping pong ball head. The current Herman is much more sophisticated, built around a skeleton of barbeque wire padded out with foam and plasticine. Harold, a creature with a voracious and interesting appetite, is born from doodles drawn in exercise books at school. “People have said he looks like a jellyfish and other things, but in my head he’s an alien. I think he’s very dependent on Herman too – he wouldn’t really be able to exist on his own.” 

Apart from this, Richard hasn’t really fleshed out a backstory for his characters, protesting that “that might be taking it too seriously!” But doesn’t he want them to be taken seriously? “Well, when I first started they were just a sort of greetings card for friends. I just wanted to have fun, and make people laugh.” It’s clearly gone a bit further than that, as Richard plans to enter his films into various competitions in the near future.

Stop-motion has a long history in animation, and Herman and Harold has a nostalgic atmosphere that reminds me of the good old days of Pingu. “I use the same software as Wallace and Gromit actually,” Richard states with some pride.

He takes the photos for the films on a webcam, which rests upon a small wooden boom that allows him to zoom and pan around, before editing them on his laptop. It all seems deceptively simple, but every tiny change in motion must be photographed, to about 15 photos per second of film. The snowman film, which is five minutes long, took him a staggering half a year to create.

“But I only did a couple of hours a day,” he says quickly, with characteristic modesty.

The influence of animations such as Wallace and Gromit on Richard’s work is clear. But he has also obviously put much of his own humour and style into his creations too, and this labour of love does not lack a great sense of fun. “I’ve realised it’s just not a good film unless the set’s been destroyed by the end!”

And what to expect next from this destructive duo? The impressively detailed Egyptian tomb set sits in the corner of Richard’s room – will it be used again? “Definitely. They’re going to have an Indiana Jones-style adventure.”

 

The Herman and Harold films can be seen at www.youtube.com/user/hermanandharold


 

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