"I hope I didn't wake you, but I really want to show you something."

Suzie Templeton is one of my all time favourite directors/animators. I came across her work fairly recently actually while researching various markets, and it was love at first sight. If you have heard of her before, you probably best know her for her animated adaptation of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

Templeton made her first animation Stanely (1999) a student film on practically no budget. It tells the story of a man obsessed with his 'prize-winning' cabbage. What sets Templeton's film aside from the other student films is not only the quality of the animation, but her talent for story telling. It is sensitive and dark, Stanely has all the components that make up a strong film; a beginning, development and a conclusion, stitched together with humour and suspense.

Her first puppets were inexpensive armatures made from balsa-wood with latex layered over the top, and to shoot her 360 degree tracking shots Templeton set up toy train set tracks. To make parts of the sets Templeton roughed up collectors furniture pieces made for Barbie.

Templeton's second short animation Dog (2001) dealt with the suffering of a boy coming to terms with the death of his mother. This was Templeton's final graduation piece from the Royal College of Art and won her a Bafta.

What inspired me so much though was looking at the huge jump in production between making her films low budget to spending $2 million on Peter and the Wolf. I admire the fact that her style doesn't significantly change, yet the quality of the entire production is heightened. One of the things Templeton said she loved so much about animation was its solitary nature, and how dramatic a change it was going from pretty much working on her own to working with a crew of 200 people.

The set from Peter and the Wolf is literally mind blowing. I had never realised that animations could be made on such a large scale. Below are some pictures I found of the set during construction.

I could easily just go on adding some of her concept sketches and raving about how beautiful I think her work is, but I should let you decide for yourself.

And finally a clip from the Oscar winning short itself.... enjoy!