It all started with a drawing of my dog. Every time I had a spare moment, I did a few scribles:

Dogs with long ears and pointy snouts that howled at the moon and started to look more like wolves. A bouncing sheep. Stars. A wolf tower…

I had lots of ideas, but I didn't have a story! Then one day, I laid all the drawings out in front of me. I re-arranged them, crumpled some up, then made fresh scribbles… And slowly a story started to emerge: A tale of a little wolf who wants to play with the moon. The moon plays a trick on the little wolf, carrying him high up into the night sky. The other wolves try to help him down, but are distracted by a very cheeky sheep! All ends well when the sun rises at dawn...

Eventually, I organised all the sketches into a story-board, adding notes about camera moves, timings and sound effects. Now I was ready to start animating. 'Little Wolf' is 5 1/2 minutes long, which meant that I had to do more than 3000 drawings! And each drawing had to be traced onto acetate, coloured in and filmed. It took 18 months to do. When all 3000 drawings had been filmed, the film was developed and I started editing the scenes together. Creating the sound effects was great fun. I used all sorts of objects to make quirky sounds, for example a baby's toy to make the cogwheel sound of the moon coming down at the end of the film. I also dragged some friends into the sound studio to make the 'BOING BAAA!' sound of the sheep.

The sound track of 'Little Wolf' was composed by Rowland Lee. We've been working together ever since! He composed the music for my second short film 'When I grow up I want to be a Tiger!' and also for the '64 Zoo Lane' TV series.

Now all 'Little Wolf' needed was an audience. And it soon got one… It was shown on TV and travelled to many film festivals. Because it's a film without dialogue, it didn't need subtitling and was enjoyed by children and adults all over the world, from Japan to Uruguay!

AWARDS

1993 Annecy International Animation Festival 'Best First Film'
1993 Annecy International Animation Festival 'French Ministry of Agriculture Prize'
1993 Mari Kutnna Award from the BFI
1993 Cinanima Espinho Portugal, 'Best Children's Film'
1993 Chicago Film Festival 'Silver Hugo'
1994 Stuttgart Trickfilmfestival 'Mercedes Benz Prize'
1994 Ottawa International Animation Festival 'Best Student Film'
1994 Hiroshima International Animation Festival 'Best First Film'
1997 Mediawave International Festival of Visual Art (Hungary) 'Audience Prize'
Also prizes at children's film festivals in Chicago and Uruguay,
at BAF (Bradford Animation Festival) and Cartoon d'Or Nomination

Little Wolf has been included in Starting Stories, a film and literacy resource from bfi education.
Little Wolf is also part of the Animation Session, performed by An at school visits.

Find out more about my 2nd short film, When I grow up I want to be a Tiger