Brian Cosgrove

The next talk was held by the renowned founder of cosgrove hall which shaped animation and TV, Brian Cosgrove.

He started from the beginning, his animation the Magic Ball. He went ion to say how things were very simple back in the early days of his career, there were very simple graphic designers with no cameras or anything technical. He introduced rostrum cameras to make things richer. His first pilot animation had to be made after the training Brian did all by himself, the only thing Brain didn't do was the backgrounds, which were done by Mark his colleague at the time, but everything else was done by Brian which was a very big feet.

He stressed the importance of a good voice over, which is totally understandable as it could make or break the immersion of the animation.

Brian didn't want to keep creating new characters as children like repetition, so he used the same characters in each show despite the era of television that he was in. This goes back to the decisions when choosing a demographic for animations, you have to know their interests and appeals.

After the Magic Ball, cosgrove hall started developing for temps. Art students started applying and being hired. Due to their artistic background being fine art none of them knew how to animate so the first project that included these temps were the wheelies which were just heads on wheels to make things a bit easier for training purposes.

But as the techniques started to become learnt by the new recruits the models started to get more complex, for example the pide piper was the first animation where the models started "flexing their muscles" with the increased complexity.

"It was a unique period and we dropped into place."

The development of the stop motion puppets got more sought after which cause Mr Saunders to become quite the perfectionist, this sprouted the company Makinnon and Saunders, due to wires poking out of some of the puppets. this made Mr Saunders develop the ball and socket joints that would in turn introduce a highly intricate armature that would serve the right purposes with efficiency and professionalism.

The talk was a great insight into the history of animation in TV, not really relevant to my practice but it did tell me a lot about the development of techniques and processes that were crucial to the development of animation, especially in such a short period of time considering the lack of knowledge due to it being very early in the era of animation.