Designing fabulous creatures for TV’s ‘Small Prophets’
In a world of CGI and visual effects, it’s refreshing to know that analog still has a place in movies!
Stop-motion methods – used to animate films like Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride – have been employed by LJMU senior lecturer Glen Southern in his latest exciting art and design commission.
Glen, who teaches BA and MA Media Production, was brought in to help design and sculpt creatures for Mackenzie Crooks' latest comedy drama 'Small Prophets' that is currently airing on BBC2 and iPlayer.
Working directly from Mackenzie’s own pencil sketches, Glen helped craft the look and feel of each of the creatures and then digitally sculpted them ready for moulding and casting.
Craft skills 'alive'
“Unlike a lot of modern creature design seen on screen these days this entire process was stop motion,” he explains.
“People might be surprised but craft skills such as concept design and digital sculpting are very much alive in an era now dominated by VFX and AI.”
Stop motion is an animation technique where physical objects are photographed, moved slightly, and photographed again in a frame-by-frame process. It is often used for puppets, clay (claymation), or toys like Lego.
Glen is one of many Liverpool School of Art and Creative Industries staff members who also work as professional creatives.
He runs Southern GFX, a small Cheshire based studio specialising in character and creature design with clients including SKY, Roald Dahl, Netflix, Mackinnon and Saunders, Nike, Lenovo, Logitech, Sainsbury’s, Adidas, Netflix, Lego, Pixologic, Wacom.
Magical creatures
Small Prophets is a sitcom that centres on a man (Pierce Quigley) who practices alchemy to create living creatures in jars - homunculi - in his shed after his girlfriend disappears. The magical creatures, who live in jars, are "prophesying spirits" that help him predict the future.
Glen worked with Mackenzie, the production team and the world renowned specialists in puppet making at Mackinnon and Saunders (names of two animators) in Altrincham to help bring to life the homunculi and form the central part of the story. The show also stars Michael Palin and Paul Kaye and is garnering rave reviews.
“I had the extreme pleasure of being asked to design and sculpt the Seraph, Queen and King,” he says.
Glen, who presented his work on Small Prophets at a publicised session for staff and students in Redmonds this week, says teaching modern craft-based media production techniques to BA and MA students is important in preparing them for a rapidly changing media world now contending with generative AI.
He took a group along to meet Mackenzie at Space Studios, Manchester where they watched some of how the show is put together. BA student Tyler Yates-Tiesteel said; “Being on set gives you a good sense of what it’s like to work in the industry. It makes it seem achievable!”
The final episode of Small Prophets aired on Sunday on BBC2 at 2.20pm.
Image: Media Production undergraduates Aaron Larway, Xander Hemmings, Alex Kelly, Zain Aslam and Tyler Yates-Tiesteel.
