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Get to know about my weekly practice

In this section you can follow how my work is progressing and the reasoning behind it.

tomechlin

After my formative assessment, Paul mentioned he wanted to see more work with lighting and for it to be more weird.

This scene took around 30mins to put together.

What's more weirder than a chair stuck to the ceiling and a sheet ghost almost looking for it. Along with UFO type of lights coming out of the doorways


The image below was supposed to be a camera following the sheet ghost while looking around the hallway, looking out of the window to see a intricate box gilded in gold and white spinning on all its axis. resembling pandoras box. I had also been listening to the audiobook of 1984 and the torture room which features in it gave me the idea to add room 101 to the scene. although I never went forward with the idea because it didn't really mean anything, the thought and process is still there.


Below is my most favourite piece I've created so far. a simple scene of a sheet ghost sat on a bed and slowly standing up, then it playing in reverse so its almost like the sheets are pulling the figure back onto the bed. This piece was inspired by the film Monsters Inc, although very loosely. The colours and shadows in some of the scenes gave me some inspiration. This room took ages to put together, using my own Ikea furniture as a reference to fill the room, along with subtle decorations to fill the wall space with films and media that have been inspirational to me over the past 2 years. Its a subtle nod to those creators and influences.


After being assigned my studio space I realised I didn't have the equipment to create a false wall. So what do i do??!

I still have the use of the television but I think it may look a little jarring and out of place within my space. I will play around with it to see if it works with my animation through the view of a window into another world.

Updated: Aug 14, 2024

With this post ill try do some creative writing after Paul Jones suggesting it. I have not done this since high school and its something I really wasn't good at.




Thursday Afternoon 5:37pm

Thursday's are usually a difficult day, the late shifts the night before take it out of me. My job is stacking shelves in the local Tesco's, it's a job I hate but I don't see the point in finding a new one.

They say, 'the grass isn't always greener on the other side' and this is what I think when it come to my job. Having to build new relationship's, learn a new role, suck up to managers that wont give you the time of day. What's the point.

As I was on my way home from work last night, I have to walk around 2 miles and half of that is through the country roads, I cant say that this is a benefit of living in a rural area because sometimes its terrifying. Last night at around 1:30am I was passing fields and something caught my eye.

As I looked over the moonlit fields which had a soft mist hanging above them, there was a unnatural movement amongst it. The mist parted like a ship breaking through water, and the grass crumbled beneath. I drew my focus to what resembled a white figure. As I started to notice more features, legs, arms, shoulders, a new wave of thick fog flooded in and blocked my view completely.

I needed to get home, I was clearly hallucinating as I was very tired. I sped up my pace and hurried home.

As I woke up the next day, my dreams were fleeting fast. Dreams of deep forests, giant monoliths and morphing mirrors into another realm were escaping my mind and I assumed last night down to another one of my dreams.

However as I looked out of my bedroom window I could see mist still covered the dips in the mountains and lingered around the base of the trees. As much I tried to recall my other dreams I couldn't, but the form in the mist was at the front of my mind and I could not think of anything else.

The rest of the day was relatively normal, shower, dinner, catching up on tv shows. I needed to drop by the local shop and drop a package off, another 4 mile round walk to the local village, at leased the weather is sunny, sunny but with a slight chill to the air.

On the way back from my venture, I took a small detour along the fields, the fields that I walk past on my way to work.

I would usually walk this way from work but It's too damn dark and using my phone for the light would drain the battery too much and I cant be left with my thoughts after a bad shift. I'm not ready to spend time with myself.

Although taking this track is a shortcut, you wouldn't think it, its like time moves slowly passing through these fields. The way the overgrown grass moves is almost like seaweed, turning with the tides, elegantly drifting. The poppies flowing back and to bring the scene back to land and the smell of damp grass in the air from last nights mist. As I looked around I focused to the distance and see something abnormal interrupt the swaying grass. I then find myself, flat on my face, looking through the blades of grass upwards and the smell of dirt embedded in my nostrils. As I glanced up through the towering blades of grass and slowly raise my head, a white form moves slowly towards me.

Swaying like a drunk leaving the pub, the fabric flowing with it, curling and creasing with every movement. I was taken back by the sight, was this a film project? Am I crashing someone's art project?

I continued to watch and the form gradually started to fade. slowly dissipating and the tendrils of grass and poppies emanating into the natural world.

Then just as nothing had happened, it vanished. The form vanished into nothing, like it never happened.

As I arose from my hands and knees I was overcome with a sense of emptiness but familiarity. For years I have wandered through and past this place and never once felt how I did then. It almost felt like I was experiencing something that never was, but I wished for it so much, just for it to be taken away from me so suddenly.

A promise never fulfilled.

A future I feel nostalgia for.

Just a memory that will long be forgotten in time.


That's my take on creative writing, to give the only context of one of my pieces. Even thats not the thought process behind this piece.

Its all down to personal perception and who am I to take that away from someone.

©2020 and beyond.. by Tom Echlin Art

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