I was commissions by Barry Hyde, singer of The Futureheads, to create an animated music video combining five songs from his solo album. The album is a musical depiction of his experiences of bipolar disorder, while my animation is an abstract depiction of my understanding of his experience, alongside my own. I used hand painted puppets and background pieces, animating the characters by hand on Dragonframe, before compiling the various elements and animating them together in After Effects. The film will be shown at a selection of Barry's album launch gigs and will soon be officially released.

I was lucky enough to be accepted to take part in the BFI Animation Academy, a UK wide course which offers 25 places a year for an intensive week of studying animation, practising industry standard skills and producing a short film. Our final film was Stargazers, a parallel between a young girl, Lucy, and a historical female astronomer, Maria Mitchell, as they both study the stars to find a comet. I was in charge of the puppet for Lucy and the full figure for Maria, while my peers made puppets for close ups of Maria.

A shot from my first animation, Tyne

Here is my first attempt at animating, a love story based around my lovely local River Tyne. As a 13 year old using a whiteboard in my school IT room it is, unsurprisingly, not the finest work. However, surprisingly, it did go on to win the Reflect Youth Award for the Port of Tyne film awards.

Music by my immeasurably talented big brother, Joe Kroese.