This time we were given a brief to look into any of the UCA archives or special collections of our choice and then form our own opinion about the subject and present it in a 10-minute presentation in the class and complement it with a written essay of about 2000 words. For this, Rebekah Taylor, the archivist for UCA had come to our campus and already inducted us on how to use UCA archives. We had about two weeks to do this project.I decided to work on Bob Godfrey archive because I genuinely love animation films and while researching I found a very interesting documentary of Bob Godfrey by BBC. In this documentary he says that an Animator has more advantage than a film maker as he can film anything. There are no limitations in animation. Only the limitations exist are in the animator himself. I decided to explore more on this aspect of Bob Godfrey’s work. You can see the video below:
I sent an email to Rebekah for this purpose and I was assuming that she must be really occupied with her work so I didn’t expect a prompt reply. But to my surprise she was very quick in replying and she asked me to come down to UCA Farnham campus where Bob Godfrey archive was. I was astonished to see that she manages archives in all UCA campuses and still finds time for students like me.
As I reached the Farnham campus, I met Rebekah and found how lovely and helpful person she is. She helped me guide through a few things. She had already kept a few boxes ready for me to look at. I had no trouble finding what I was looking for.
During my exploration I found several hand painted cells, and a lot of letters, and all sorts of documents from his studio. In another box, I found a lot of inspirational material that he must have used for his characters and stories. There were a lot of newspaper clippings too. Bob Godfrey to me seemed like an eccentric person, who has found a perfect art form to express himself.
I took a lot of pictures but I’m not able to upload them here because Rebekah had asked me not to as they are copyright material and belong to UCA. So, I’m afraid I won’t be able to put my 10-minute classroom presentation here too. However, I’m putting my 2000 words essay here. You can see it below.
