Tony once told me that he felt, “life is a serendipitous exercise”. I often think about how lucky I was to meet him by chance at an animation screening in May 2012.
An animator and filmmaker myself, I was keen to keep in touch and it wasn’t long before I asked him if we could work together on a film about his work.
He was a very modest man and especially enjoyed talking about others’ stuff. We decided to create a short film which would document the beginnings of the British computer animation industry, from his perspective.
My new pal gave me many a guided tour through the world of early CGI (ie. the amazing archive stored in his flat). He showed me films and photos, printouts, punched cards…
It soon became apparent that a single-screen short was perhaps not the best way to document his eclectic stories and stuff.
We decided to create a mix of animated documentary, archive materials and technical information and hopefully some funny bits, organised in such a way as to emulate the experience of exploring an archive.
