An Oscar-nominated British animator is celebrating after winning a Bafta and raising enough money to fund her next film.
Daisy Jacobs, whose The Bigger Picture is up for the best short animation Oscar, has raised more than £21,000 through crowd-funding site Kickstarter.
The target was reached just three days after she picked up a Bafta Award on Sunday for the same film.
“It looks lovely on my shelf sitting with other awards,” she said.
Jacobs used two-metre painted characters in full-size sets to tell the darkly humorous story of two brothers struggling with the care of their elderly mother.
Jacobs created The Bigger Picture for her masters degree in directing animation at the National Film and Television School (NFTS).
Scene from making of The Bigger Picture The Bigger Picture was animated using life-sized painted figures
The seven-minute short – which has already won some 25 awards – took six months to animate, with Jacobs and her team working six days a week, 12 hours a day.
For her next film, Jacobs plans to look at the divorce boom of the 1970s and ’80s.
“It’s about family. It looks at the ideas of why we drift apart and why people leave,” she told the BBC.
“This will be a similar in style to The Bigger Picture – it’s still life-size animation – but I’ve pushed myself. There’s a new element to the technique.”
While The Bigger Picture was fully funded by the NFTS – which provided the camera, lights and a large studio space – Jacobs has to find the cash to fund her new project.
Hence the crowd-funding campaign, which she launched last month. “We need a big space for six months and that’s where all the money goes,” she said.
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Daisy Jacobs said her grandmother Eileen was a ‘very important influence’
Most of the props will be made from damaged furniture, paper mache and cereal boxes “that my mum and neighbours have been collecting”.
But for now, the plans have been put on hold while Jacobs and producer Chris Hees travel to Los Angeles for the Oscars on 22 February.
“I don’t know what to expect,” she said. “I’ve got a dress my mum gave me. In terms of speeches – I don’t really like to plan anything like that.”
However The Bigger Pictures fares on the big night, Jacobs plans to start work on the new film “more or less immediately” when she gets back from Hollywood.
-BBC
