Running Update

I'm now running for 23:40. The 10% extra each session seems to be working quite well. The interesting thing is that I am not limiting my pace, just the duration of each run, so I don't feel especially slow.

My last three runs have been in a pair of Lunar Glides, kindly supplied by Nike. They feel really nice - super light but supportive, and a nice change from the Structure Triax I've been wearing. They feel roomy in the toe box, with an upper that's really minimal.

Blanchland Moor Loop

This is the favourite route that inspired the hill climb sequence of Onwards. There's a killer 25% climb for the first 2 km up to the edge of the moor.

Blanchland Moor Loop at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

Hand Made

Having been involved in making an animation for a significant length of time, I've come back to consider drawing with renewed vigour.

I was reading a Quentin Blake picture book with my daughter earlier this year and it struck me how brilliantly honest and direct his drawings are. As a child I never really loved his artwork, it used to frustrate me that the lines didn't all meet up; but looking at his work now it's exactly that quality that gives the line such freshness and directness.

One of the things that tends to frustrate me no end in my own work is trying to maintain a particular quality of line while making a drawing. In trying to do this, the constant deliberation of how one is drawing gives the image a stiffness and ungainliness. So, inspired by Quentin Blake, I decided to try and draw without any conscious consideration of the outcome.

I've become quite consumed by drawing in this way. I've also stopped (cross-) hatching, partly as a reaction to the amount of it I did while making drawings for the film and partly as one of my periodic re-assessments of mark-making in terms of efficiency, simplicity and meaning in a drawing. It's the thought that the great thing about a drawing is that it's a language all of its own; it doesn't have to imitate a three-dimensional reality. After designing toys for ten years, I found myself drawing characters on paper as though they were plastic figurines, and the liberating thing about drawing is that you don't have to do that.

Anyway, the above image was made with this awareness. I also made all the colour separations by hand.

Running Update

Rather than bore all the readers of the Amos Blog to tears with them, I 'm going to publish my running-related posts here from now on.

Unfortunately, I'm not running the London Marathon this year. In retrospect I think I came back too quickly and too intensely after the stress fracture I suffered last year. I did manage 32:23 for the Brighton 10K in November, but it went downhill from there. I picked up an IT band problem in my left leg and then I got a knock on my right ankle where I had the stress fracture at a frozen cross-country race in January. I was still running every day, but often there wasn't much pleasure in it. I did a 20-miler at the end of February and realised that getting through the high mileage of marathon training, plus the race itself , was just going to be too much.

I took March off to rest and give things a chance to heal, and then started running again with a plan to build very gradually. I started back on 12 April running for 10 minutes. The idea is to run every other day, 10% longer for each session. This Sunday I'll be up to 19:30! Frustrating though it is to be running for only a short time, you end up really looking forward to and appreciating each run. Depending on how things progress, I'm thinking of going for a 5K race in July and then building up to a 10K at the end of the summer.

I read with interest that Paula Radcliffe has just had an operation to remove a bunion which is now thought to be the cause of all her recent injury problems. I suffer from the same problem (in both feet) and they do seem to mess up your running mechanics.

Interestingly, the film has given me a bit of perspective on it all, and re-affirmed the simple pleasure of just running. Being injured, what I miss isn't the racing but just getting out there and doing it.

Onwards

At the beginning of last year I was thinking about what kind of project I would like to work on. I had become interested in the idea of characters that were less referential and more iconic and abstract. I particularly wanted to do something with a potato-headed stick-man that I had been drawing at that time.

I liked the idea of a moving image project that involved my obsession with running. Rather than make a narrative-based film, I wanted the content to be non-linear, reflecting the way I make drawings that have a logic all of their own.

I was talking to a friend at Nike, Kerry Shaw, about this idea and, given the subject matter, she suggested that Nike might be interested in supporting the film. I had been an admirer of Shynola's collaboration with David Shrigley in their promo for the track Good Song. I liked the way it maintained Shrigley's drawn aesthetic in its transformation into moving image, so I contacted them to see if they would be interested in working with me on the idea. Richard 'Kenny' Kenworthy agreed, and worked heroically on the film.

The film was inspired by certain personal experiences in running – a favourite run over Blanchland moor in Northumberland, being attacked by a crow in Singapore – and also by the transcendent, almost psychedelic experience of the simple act of running.

Rather than a marketing project inititated by Nike, the film was something proposed and produced by myself, and as such I hope represents a much more equal collaboration with a brand.

You can visit a site for the film here.