The first animation of Mr Watt (Grumpy Man of Metal)

As a submission for a competition organised by the Crafts Council and V&A, I have done this short little animation. Competition is titled “The Power of Making” and it’s been a laugh doing it.

pylon design competition

Chris Huhne the current Energy secretary recently announced a competition for a new Pylon design, to carry electricity from all the new off-shore & wind turbines that National Grid will be building.
I thought crikey…when it comes to public bits of metalwork all over the country, it doesn’t get any bigger than that – how can I not at least have a stab at it. I just got my rejection letter yesterday, but am still really pleased that I put myself through the paces of what was actually rather a demanding brief with lots of technical demands and issues and requirements that were quite a challenge. All the time my head was screaming “dont bother dont bother – all the top architects & engineers from Norman Foster & Thomas Heatherwick etc will be going for it – dont waste your time” but I couldn’t let it go. The competition was managed by RIBA.
Along with a load of written stuff, everyone had to submit an A1 board which had to include a picture of your pylon dropped into a landscape which they provided. I had to make a maquette of my idea and photograph it as my drawing skills aren’t really up to the slickness I assume they require. Any, here’s my (rejected) submission:

Mr Watt goes to the Museum

I applied for and got (16/12/2010), an Arts Council “Grant for the Arts”, to write a new ‘Mr Watt Grumpy Man of Metal’ book, which was inspired by the collections at Hove Museum. This will involve making specific objects which are then used to write a little story about Mr Watt donating some things to the Museum.

Said objects are to be placed around the Museum in the relevant show-cases, and form a ‘treasure’ trail for children to discover and then enter into a prize draw. The prize is the object that the Museum ‘declined’ to accept, which is what goes wrong for Mr Watt in this particular story. I will also run some workshops for local schoolchildren to come to the workshop and try out plasma cutting & other techniques to make their own ‘protagonist/antagonist’ characters & props – this work will form the basis of an exhibition in one of the galleries at the Museum & Art Gallery ~ all of the pieces I have ever made for previous Mr Watt books will be in the other gallery.

Some background about Mr Watt (Grumpy Man of Metal): He is a metal man living in a metal world making metal things that go wrong. He is my alter-ego; he is based on 30 years of worrying about everything I do. Think Clangers meets Captain Mainwaring.

Here is a typical page:

I make all of the characters and props, then photograph and photo-shop them into pages like the above. I love doing it and it makes me laugh ~ you don’t need to tell me about the impossibilities of getting published & the sheer competitive nature of the business etc etc, I’m just going to do it;  it’s hugely therapeutic and such a contrast to the world of architects, engineers, Health & Safety, vandalism & bureaucracy that seems to be the norm in my daily work-life.

The exhibition at Hove Museum is scheduled to start mid-March 2011 so need to crack on. Book will have to be ready to go to printers early to mid February.

Hove Museum & Art Gallery houses a large Craft Collection (including some of my work!), and lots of equipment from the early years of film-making, Hove being a base for the early pioneers. Other galleries include local archaeology, toys and ceramics, so there is plenty of inspiration to be had.

A case study:

I wanted at least one of the objects to be film related – but what is something different that  Mr Watt would invent? And how could I gently tease Mr Watt about it in the story (which is generally the way it goes in all of the books). After a while an idea takes form and this is what I decided on: a special “Thought Projection Hat”.

A few scribbles and experiments later and it’s made:This will now need ‘lasso-ing’ out in photo-shop (a job I (strangely) never seem to mind):

And then I can drop it into the page with text and play around with and distort the image etc:

6 objects later, plus a few props such as the Museum itself and it’s all set for the graphic designer (John Christopher at White Design) to get print ready.

Other objects made include a fossil, a teddy-bear, a toby-jug, a pop-up book and a wheel-barrow for him to transport it all in.

As you may be able to tell from these pics, the rejected object is a self-portrait made out of Mr Watt’s nose hair (couldn’t you have picked something else Mr Watt?) ~ this is the prize to be won by picking up a trail leaflet, and going around the collections ticking off the clues next to the objects.

Goldstone Primary School were quick to respond when Hove Museum sent out an invitation for expressions of interest re: workshops.

Following a session at the Museum to talk to the children, set a brief and get some preliminary ideas down on paper, 30 children came to my workshop in groups of 6 and got stuck in. The fact that the Steam Locomotive commission was still in the way just added to the fun….

The children drew their designs out in chalk on sheets of 2mm steel, prior to me ‘guiding’ their hand whilst holding the plasma cutting torch….

A bit of hammering required to remove oxidation slag:

…and some heating, light forging, general shaping & welding to create their finished designs:

Work is now in-situ at the gallery & the exhibition is open.

Decent pictures still to follow, but here’s an example of work by two of the children;       “An Elf doing the chores, being surprised by a clown jumping out of the dustbin”……where did that come from??
There are a total of 30 pieces, arranged in 15 box frames: 30 other schoolchildren wrote the text to accompany each ‘vignette’..

And here’s the entrance to the Mr Watt gallery…..Photo: James Pike (www.jimpix.com)

Here’s a little video I have made and submitted to the Crafts Council & V&A for their up-coming show “The Power of Making”

http://vimeo.com/26801275   ~ have a click – it’s only 1.5mins long!

jenny lind steam locomotive

Here is my blog. I was told to do it.

Thought it might be handy for showing fabrication sequences for some of the more interesting commissions…. hope you agree: if not, I am reliably informed that I can delete your comments….. check out my other work at www.metaljon.com if you want to see more.

And now, I shall be making a life size “2-dimensional” replica of an 1847 steam locomotive, the Jenny Lind….

In 1847 the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway commissioned a new locomotive from the E.B.Wilson works in Leeds. Named the Jenny Lind (after the famous Swedish opera singer of the period), it became the most popular locomotive used on the line.

It was so successful that the name stuck for a whole class and more than 70 were built, including 24 for the Midland railway; at one per week it could be said to be the first locomotive to be mass-produced to a consistent pattern.

This 1:1 scale ‘sculpture’ is going to be cantilevered on a steel beam over a disused railway bridge in Brighton’s New England Quarter. Commissioned by Quoin Estates & Developments Ltd, it will be one of the public art features in Brighton’s soon to be opened green corridor walk.

Where to start? Oh I know.. at the bottom -the wheels; I know the main driving wheel was 6′ diameter, so I can scale everything up from there.

Here are the wheels suspended in their respective chassis sections, ready to be bolted together. At 8 metres long, this is going to fit from wall to wall in my workshop.

Next step – get the wheels & chassis sections all bolted together and standing on a jig.

The train will be mounted on a square steel beam measuring 400x400x10mm thick, so this jig will stand in for this.

I want to evoke the atmosphere of  a Victorian etching/engraving, whilst giving the impression of a Ghost Train from the past. The train will be lit up at night, and the lights will slowly fade up and down, so the train seems to appear and disappear.

I’m thinking I need to get the undercarriage etc all done to scale first, before I start getting all arty on the rest of it; in the meantime I will start adding some of the nice details, such as that lovely fretwork ‘mudguard’, the firebox, all the drive linkages….and that leaf spring on the front will make a nice little feature….Time for a bit of something arty.

I’ve always been worried about how  I’m going to treat the boiler and top half in general. I don’t want it looking too flat, but by necessity it will; it’s the most visible half from a distance; I want it to look like an etching, but not too insubstantial, and I want to convey an impression of shading/hatchmarks etc etc. I’ve done a couple of experiments and cut them off, but now here’s the dome, and it feels like it’s what I’ve got in  my head.

I’ve used a mixture of plasma cut sheet and forged 6mm bar, in order to give an impression of shading on the one side; mixing the negative and positive shapes of shadows on the fluted surface of the dome. Forged bar is more akin to the bleeding ink lines of a drawing, and wibbly-wobbly is my style anyway….

Thanks to Mike for these pictures of an early & a later Jenny Lind class:

Same technique for the safety valve chimney, but with a 3D top:

…and now – scale up & print the name plate, stick it to a sheet of steel, and use a centre-punch to mark out all around the letters, before plasma-cutting it out and welding it in:Making the boiler is the tricky bit now – so far it’s all been big chunky stuff, scaled off an old drawing. Now an artistic ‘interpretation’ is called for. I want to emulate hatch-marks & drawn lines – like a etchers ink marks etc.
For the boiler, this means horizontal lines in order to to represent a rotund cylindrical form; they would be close together at the top and bottom and getting wider apart towards the midway line. This presents problems….The wider apart they get, the more space there is between them, the more trees and background clutter will show through them and possibly detract/complicate visually. Just using open spaces to look like the background paper of a drawing isn’t going to work. And there’s a danger the whole thing starts to look like a giant flat venetian blind, or a louvred ventilation panel on a diesel loco. The horizontal bands can’t be too thin, otherwise when (not if) vandals etc climb on the train they will get bent; thin and transparent might be what’s needed visually, but it wont last long.
I have resolved to use colour to achieve some of the effect required, which entails making these boiler sections in bits and pieces, so that individual sections can be separately powder-coated – top sections a lighter grey, bottom sections darker. Annoyingly it wont be easy to imagine exactly how it’s going to look until I erect on site.

I have welded bits on and cut them off again so many times I have lost count. I know it’s not right until I walk into the workshop the next day and mutter ‘great’ under my breath when I see it afresh. And I muttered it this morning, so, progress!

I like the way a ‘shadow’ can emphasise rotundity: …and I like the way these little details break up the otherwise slightly monotonous flat areas:The back-end is my favourite part at the moment – there’s a real feeling of weight sitting on its back wheel, and it contrasts with the delicate little bit of forged handrail above:Unfortunately, the Brighton Isetta works were not operating in 1847, else I could have put some bubble cars on the back end…..time to start adding a few minor details – e.g. drivers levers and whistle:

front buffer (with ‘negative’ hook):some ironmongery at the back end:and one chimney……Time to consider lighting arrangements so I can make bespoke housings integrated into the work itself; here’s a drawing I’ve been using to scale everything off from, with some initial thoughts for positions of LED colour change units, following discussions with a lighting engineer:Everything will go on the back burner for a few weeks now; jobs remaining include: make & incorporate housings for the lights, once they have been decided on; dismantle and fettle all pieces as they are removed; ‘flat-pack’ all bits into relevant piles depending on what shade of black/grey/white they are to be powder-coated- (all work will be shot-blast and zinc-sprayed prior to powder-coating); preparation of the site, to include installing the mounting beam; check electricity supply from existing street light supply and get an electrician to prepare etc. I will update this blog occasionally – my next project is an exhibition at Hove Museum of “Mr Watt, Grumpy Man of Metal” including a new (Arts Council funded) book ~ “Mr Watt goes to the Museum” ……what could go wrong? I hope to get a couple more extra stories as well, including one involving an old knitting machine & a witch..Exhibition opens 17th March 2011

A future book will feature a steam locomotive not too dissimilar to the Jenny Lind….

More Mr Watt info at  www.mrwatt.biz

There’s been a lot of head scratching over the lighting of the train; Network Rail have finally lifted their objection to the train occupying their air-space over the bridge and are now conducting a ‘technical approval’; in anticipation of movement (and a desire to reclaim my workshop), the train is now flat-packed and catalogued ready to go the finishers for shot-blasting/zinc-spraying & powder-coating in 4 different shades of grey.

Recently ‘stored’ the support beam on site, ready to ‘slide’ into position when (if) Network Rail give their permission for the train to be “in their air-space” over the bridge. Beam is 11m long and weighs 1.5 tonnes. Delivered by hiab lorry (MPD Transport) and trundled up the green corridor on a makeshift bogey consisting of one land-rover axle….

Whilst on the subject, here are a couple of shots of some work previously installed on the Green Corridor. A series of “Clinker Shovels” hanging on the now defunct brick piers that would once have supported more railway yards and works:

…and a length of railings based on a tool rack of clinker shovels:

Meanwhile…. the latest Mr Watt book is now underway, with a train (sort of) inspired by the Jenny Lind – this story will be about the ‘railway coming’ and rolling over his shed: