Western Morning News (Saturday)
Comedian brings a monster to life – with animation
ACTOR, writer and comedian Charlie Higson, best known for his appearances in TV’s The Fast Show, has revealed a new skill after creating a 60-second animated film about the horror film star Boris Karloff for a competition run by a South West art college.
During the first national lockdown, Plymouth College of Art and Plymouth Arts Cinema joined forces to bring students, staff and members of the public the opportunity to enter the Boris Karloff 60-Second Film Challenge.
Open to all styles and genres, entrants were asked to submit a oneminute video taking inspiration from the life and work of English actor Boris Karloff, most famously known for his role as Frankenstein’s monster in Frankenstein (1931) and later sequels.
And yesterday it was announced that the Boris Karloff Symposium committee had chosen author and actor Charlie Higson’s film as the winner.
The judges’ committee, made up of academics from Plymouth College of Art including Head of School of Design and Communication Peter Barker and Head of Academic Research Professor Judith Noble, said that the film “showed imagination and technical skill and encapsulated the theme of our forthcoming symposium on the enduring appeal of Boris Karloff ’s work.” Charlie’s prize includes having his one-minute movie circulated by Plymouth College of Art, as well as participation in the Boris Karloff Symposium, which takes place during Halloween 2021.
Charlie is best known for his work as an author, TV writer, actor and comedian. Starring in
The Fast Show in 1994, he quickly became a household name with characters such as
Swiss Toni and Ralph of Ralph and Ted, who he played alongside comedian Paul Whitehouse. Later,
Charlie found success as an author, in writing the hugely successful Young
Bond series, which has sold over a million copies in the UK and has been translated into over 24 different languages, as well as The Enemy, a series of zombie horror books for teens. But now, he’s trying his hand at animation.
He said, “We’d all just gone into lockdown and no-one knew how long it was going to last. People thought it was the chance to learn a new language or write their next novel, but it turns out the underlying anxiety of a pandemic makes it quite hard to concentrate! I found it the same, and since I wasn’t able to do any of my TV projects, I found it easier to focus on smaller projects.”
He said he was asked to do a sketch of Swiss Tony “Zooming” his assistant, but realised it wouldn’t be possible without the suit, hair and make-up, so created an animation instead.
“I would download images of Swiss Toni and use a rotoscope technique to trace them, then apply different mouth shape animations to his head. It was this method I used for the Boris Karloff short.” He said it was a great project to make the film for the Plymouth competition. His animation pays homage to Karloff’s mastery of character acting.
■ Watch Charlie’s tribute to ‘The Hero of Horror’ Boris Karloff on Plymouth College of Art’s YouTube channel.