Edward Williamson

My name is Edward Williamson and I have made this animation about the Edo period of Japan to explore why people fight for high ranks, the punishment for failing and taking a life. Gold Blood Mud. This animation may contain some blood. So be warned I suffer from dyslexia and autism, and this makes it difficult for me to connect with people, which is why I have always wanted to create visual media like comics and animation to try and communicate my ideas and how I feel with others. I have tried to do this through all types of visual media such as stop motion, rotoscope, paper cutout and hand drawn animation. I like to experiment on how far one can go for this to work in mixed media. I’ve always taken inspiration from plenty of comics and animations that have a mixed media approach ranging from full style clash like The Amazing World of Gumball or subtle reference like the live action direction of Blue Eye Samurai which was a big inspiration for my project. This is about two samurai fighting to the death so they can ascend to the higher rank of Samurai and be recognized for it. One is born to a great Samurai and wants to prove his worthy of the mantel, and the other from slum striving to be the best. A story told through metaphors and grim imagery. I have explored multiple tools in making media like pencil, pen, chalk, paint etc. That’s just the physical mediums and I’ve also used digital software and tried merging the two. This was done through digital software for the animation while using multiple means of making the on-model character, such as stop motion on figure, shapes and rough drafts while styling it in an ink brush style to match the art style of the Japan brush stroke. Major thanks to Sanae for both translating and reading my script in Japanese.