“Welcome to the Rhubarb Kitchen!
“Today we’re making my all time favourite rhubarb recipe, a rhubarb version of the classic baked cheesecake.
“It might be very calorific but our local-grown forced rhubarb really is something to celebrate.”
My cartoon animation from Wakefield’s Rhubarb Festival features Barbara’s recipe and Karen Chalmer’s music.
Category: Art
Bouncing Coin
After finishing my Rhubarb Festival animations, I realised that it was time for me a bit more about animation. I’m enjoying reading The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams but thought that I’d understand it better if I tried some of the animations that he suggests for myself. This bouncing ball animation took just minutes to film but it took a while for me to find the most effective way to convert the sequence of images into an animation. After trying the timeline in Photoshop and in Adobe Animate, I eventually settled for importing as an image sequence into Premiere Pro.
My studio setup was a precariously balanced iPad and my subject was a 1797 twopenny piece on the studio floor. Appropriately Richard Williams’ hefty Survival Kit provides the necessary gravitas.
A Brief History of Rhubarb
Commissioned for Wakefield’s Rhubarb Festival, my cartoon animation tells the story of rhubarb from its origins in the cold winters and rich moist soils of Southern Siberia, through to the heyday of Yorkshire’s Rhubarb Triangle when a regular night train from Ardsley Station carried 200 tons of forced rhubarb to London.
Along the way we meet Marco Polo, Ghengis Khan’s camels, Nicholas Culpeper and Rhuben Cushstead, head gardener.
Music by Karen Chalmers.
Dawn ’til Dusk
This time-lapse sequence shows clouds moving north-east as the weather fronts that preceded Storm Dennis swept in from the North Atlantic. At the end of the middle sequence you can see the higher clouds are moving in a different direction to the lower clouds, veering off to the east a little.
Righty Tighty
Because of the Coriolis Effect, in the Northern Hemisphere moving masses of air are deflected to the right (the same direction as tightening a screw). I can remember standing on a recreation ground roundabout and feeling that pull. If you stand with the wind behind you, the high pressure area is always to your right.
Spring Bulbs
We planted hundreds of crocus, iris, snake’s-head fritillary and tête-à-tête daffodil bulbs in the autumn and they’ve done well, coming up amongst the cyclamen here in the front garden. The cyclamen have been in flower right through the winter.
This is my first ever post written – and photographed – on an iPhone. My previous mobile phone dates back to 2005, when I was working on my High Peak Drifter sketchbook and Barbara insisted that I should take a phone with me in case of emergencies. I’m going to use my new iPhone a whole lot more.
Of course I don’t really want to make phone calls, it’s the possibilities of using apps like Adobe Capture to do all sorts of things when I’m out and about that I can’t do with my iPad that appeals to me.
Rhubarb Wrap Party
After three weeks, I finally finished my Brief History of Rhubarb animation yesterday, just on the deadline. My decision to enliven the Zucca Bar scene by inviting Rhuben Cushstead, head gardener, and all the other characters to the wrap party proved to involve an awful lot of animation. The Chinese doctor seems to have got into an argument about the medicinal properties of rhubarb with Nicholas Culpeper while his patient, the mandarin, is at the other end of the bar evidently suffering from the effects of one too many Rubarbaro Zuccas. The Zucca Bar is in Milan, so it was a bit of surprise to see Marco Polo from Venice bobbing around in the background. As usual Rhuben is propping up the bar, oblivious to the smart signore, who is trying to attract the barman’s attention behind him.
The snippet of music is Rhuben’s theme from the animation. My friend, Karen Chalmers, writes:
‘for the Rhubarb patch, I put together a little ditty on my keyboard, featuring clarinet (which to me, always reminds me of Yorkshire). I added a few train sounds (haha) for your steam train. It should fit together pretty well timing-wise.’
It fitted perfectly. Sorry there are just a couple of bars here, but you can hear the full soundtrack next week: I’ll post the final cut next week, when this animation and another featuring Barbara’s rhubarb cheesecake recipe get their world premiere at Wakefield’s Rhubarb Festival.
No red carpet at the old market hall next to the bus station where my work will be screened alongside that of seven other animators, but there will be a chance to step inside a recreation of a rhubarb shed, candle lit and full of real, growing, forced rhubarb rootstock.
Rhuben and a Rhubarb Sculpture
With these two animations, I’ve completed my Brief History of Rhubarb for the Rhubarb Festival.
To finish the sequence, I’ve drawn the rhubarb sculpture which stands at the corner of Thornes Park.
Drawing Rhuben
Just in case you were wondering how I conjured up my cartoon character, head gardener Rhuben Cushstead, here’s the inside story, as seen in a timelapse video of the whole process of drawing in Adobe Fresco, from importing some of my sketchbook drawings to create the scene in the Rhubarb Patch, to isolating elements of Rhuben, such as his left forearm, for my animation.
The video lasts one minute. If only I could work at that speed!
In the next section of my video, I’ll draw portraits of Prophet Wroe and Adam Hood, forester, who will then introduce their own corners of the Rhubarb Triangle.
Camel Train
At last I’ve got those camels actually walking across the Gobi Desert. This is another Adobe Animate scene for my rhubarb animation, drawn in Adobe Fresco on my iPad Pro.
Marco Polo on Rhubarb
Marco has found his voice in my latest clip for my Brief History of Rhubarb animation.