Edwin Rostron on making work for websites
Words of the Visionary, online comic by Edwin Rostron
This Months Animator on Animator is focusing upon Edwin Rostron.
Edwin Rostron is an artist currently based in London. He was born in Doncaster in 1977 and grew up in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He studied Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University and studied Animation at the Royal College of Art. His work is an attempt to visualise the realms of the unconscious and takes inspiration from a myriad of sources including alternative comics, ‘Neo Romantic’ painters such as Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland, and the post-industrial landscape of North-East England, where he grew up. His animations have been shown at festivals such as onedotzero, Pictoplasma and the Australian International Animation Festival.
Image still: Visions of the invertebrate, Edwin Rostron
Among Edwin Rostrons filmography are two films which are part of the Animate Projects Collection. Of unknown Origin (2010) is a commission for the projects ‘Rough Machine’, and Visions of the invertebrate (2011) was selected for the online exhibition Animate OPEN: Digitalis this year.
We spoke to Edwin about how he creates different content for online platforms…
Your work encompasses drawings, photographs, writing and comics – and you present much of it online – do you think of that as a specific ‘site’ – and does that context shape your work?
My website was initially just a convenient way of showing my work, and of giving it all a bit of unity and order. I have recently begun to experiment more with the possibilities of online presentation with my comics, which are the first things I’ve made specifically for my website. I have also been involved with some other online projects – the short stories on my site were written for a long-running performance work by the artist Barbara Campbell, and my last film Of Unknown Origin was commissioned by Animate Projects for the APEngine website.
Whilst my films are hand-drawn, they are put together on a computer and outputted on to digital files, so there is maybe a natural affinity to their being viewed digitally. The graphic quality and fragmentary nature of much of my work also makes it quite well suited to the online world and to a computer screen. I feel I am just at the beginning of exploring ways of presenting and developing my work online.
You can read the full Animate Projects interview with Edwin Rostron here.