Tagtool weekend with Maki and crew

A couple of weeks ago we had a visit from Maki and the crew from Tulln in Austria, the developers of the Tagtool.  They arrived on the Friday evening when we had a barbecue (with lots of beer and calvados) so the Tagtool sessions began on the Saturday and continued on Sunday morning.  Maki had brought his Tagtool mini with him so the set up enabled us to have two people drawing and animating together – which was great fun.  They also took video and still photos to document the weekend’s events and for some of the sessions Jan and Dima provided guitar and drums accompaniment.

I did two drawing sessions on the Saturday with Maki.  I found this an extremely interesting and stimulating experience and I think that working in this way caused me to think even more concentratedly than when I draw alone.  In the evening our Australian friend Peter and his wife joined the company and we had an open session when everyone joined in.  On Sunday morning Maki and I did another session together – drawing for about 40 minutes without a break – quite a marathon!

This video clip, and the one that follows, were both made from our sessions on the Saturday. Dima has speeded up our drawing to fit the length of the two songs. I was quite pleased with the results of this process although I think I would have preferred the first video to be played at a rather slower speed than it appears here. While I usually quite enjoy watching the drawing process played faster than normal, when the animation is speeded also, sometimes it becomes too busy for my eyes.

During the weekend when Dima and Jan weren’t improvising for us we worked to a selection of our favourite CDs, including Laibach, Tom Waites, Coolhaven and Yma Sumac.  However, Dima added a different soundtrack to the videos  – this was not the music that we used to accompany our drawing.  The two tracks he has used are ‘Stay the Same’ and ‘Seventh Day’ from the CD ‘Voices of Eden’ by the Swedish group Flesk Quartet.