Tuesday 4 February 2014

Pottery, Animation, and Music

This week we’re pleased to say that we recently met with the lovely people at Thiasos about their involvement in the animation currently under development. Thiasos are ancient theatre specialists who emphasise music and performance. You can find out more about their work on their site: http://www.thiasos.co.uk/index.html

You may recall that music from Thiasos, written by composer Jamie Masters, featured on two previous Panoply animations: Pelops and Eros & Aphrodite. We hope that for the new animation, Thiasos music will form the soundtrack and that they will perform live at its launch in the Ure Museum this Autumn. More on that as it develops.

The animation itself is coming along well. The figures are being prepared (or in some cases re-prepared) so that they can be animated. That means, for example, creating sections of torso so that when the figures lift their arms, there is body behind rather than a blank space. The added sections are modelled on (and in most cases made from) the rest of the figure.

The animation has a name now: Hoplites! Greeks at War. Hoplites! exists within a wider project called Every Soldier Has a Story. Both are funded by the AHRC-funded Communicating Ancient Greece and Rome programme run by the Archive for Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. More soon on Every Soldier Has a Story and how you can get involved!