We started off by making a roller coaster car and photographing ourselves in it. We then took those photos and made cut-outs from them. The group had painted a wonderfully chaotic looking roller coaster ride and we places the cut-outs on this.
It took about a hundred photos to do this animation. I had a little team of people in a corner doing this in shifts while the rest of the group got stuck into the rest of the project.
When we showed this at Chapel Allerton Festival we made a little video box for it, with a big red button that you pressed to start it off. That little extra element of interaction, made it that bit more exciting for people. It was great to see people enjoying it and the kids from the group being proud that they'd made it.
I grew a beard, because I didn't feel like myself. When I shaved it off I expected to feel like myself again. I didn't, but it was the start.
My friend Pete committed the whole thing to film. I wanted to capture what I felt was a deep spiritual moment. Pete added the music, which reveals wonderfully that shaving off a beard, is in fact, quite silly.
I published the video in the same month that You-Tube released it's first beta. However, I didn't know that at the time, so I published it on my own site.
My video was featured on Boing Boing and about 50,000 people flooded to my site in response. My very understanding hosting company decided not to charge me for the extra bandwidth I used. This is lucky as it would have cost me over £1,000 at their stated charges.
The shear ridiculousness of it all really made me smile. It also inspired me to get stuck into playing about with my own ideas outside of the normal 9 to 5. The beard has led to a number of very fantastic things.