Mikey Please - Animator

 

“Animation is absolute alchemy – it’s the closest thing we have to magic. Lifeless things come to life.’’

 

As huge fans of his work, we were honored to be able to catch up with Michael ‘Mikey’ Please, the multi-award-winning British animation writer and director. Mikey, whose 2010 stop-motion animation film The Eaglemen Stag won him a BAFTA for Best Short Animation, has recently premiered his latest film ‘Marilyn Myller’ at the 2014 Sundance Festival. In this interview, Mikey let us into his London-based studio to talk about the creative process behind Marilyn Myller, the story of a sculptor dealing with the differences between the expectations of her work and the reality, which as Mikey explains, in many ways mirrors his own experience with the creative process of filmmaking. In this edition of Submarine Channel Profiles, Mikey gives us a unique insight to the making of Marilyn Myller, including his chance discovery of plastazote foam as a material to create his characters and their world. He also explains how his unique style has evolved as a result of his love – or should that be need – for a real physicality in his work. Almost everything you see in Marilyn Myller is either carved or folded.

 

‘I used to write a lot of comics, make a lot of plasticine models, and really enjoyed the storytelling. Animation is a natural way of bringing all of these separate, rather wonderful elements into one thing.’ Mikey Please

 

Director: Carine Bijlsma

Camera: Gijs Besseling

Submarine Channel