healthy start

The hardest bit, I've found, of starting a health drive is getting from the horizontal position. If you can maneuver yourself, or get someone else to maneuver you, into a nearly standing position and then you are most of the way there. Once upright, keep putting one foot in front of the other and if you lean forwards a bit, you find you have to keep stepping in order to not crumple back on the floor - it's this sort of momentum that I think the health world is all about... and if you manage to stay upright and moving forwards for at least 20 seconds, you can consider yourself to be truly engaged with a healthy fitness activity. Whatever you do don't stop or let anyone get in your way or you will have to start the whole thing again, this time from an even more demoralizing, down on the ground position, than before.

The Wine Talking

Ok so I did this a wee while back - but the same goes! In fact I can hold my drink even less now, it's just back then I didn't realise it was so obvious.

Note to self, stop listening to self..

Footnote

What more can I add?

Drawing indirectly...

So my hands are quite full just now with these two, but that doesn't mean the drawing stops. We are really getting through all those stubs of animation pencils I have collected through various jobs over the years!

Flu Animation on BBC news

This year we made an ad for the Scottish Government's flu campaign and here is a clip featured on BBC news. The Scottish campaign targets high risk groups not usually associated with flu complications. click here for the full commercial.

Handmade Turkey

Happy Christmas everyone xxx

I Do Cartoons!

I have got a spot in Mums inc. magazine for working mums. It is a new glossy magazine for all you fabulous working Mums out there whether you're in business or employed! If you want to get hold of the gorgeous glossy handbag size mag you can always subscribe and have it sent to your door. Get in touch on contactus@mumsinc.co.uk for details. Alternatively you can sneak a peak here!

Everyday Masterpieces

A short film I have just finished for Lukas Simonis of VRIL and his latest album The Fatal Duckpond. Each track had a filmmaker invited to create a visual and this is mine! They are launching the DVD with all the films in the new year - meanwhile you can sneak a glance here!

Browse/Purchase more VRIL tunes here!

Scottish Flu is back!

Just finished a 20 sec TV commercial and press work for Healthier Scotland's flu campaign for this winter. This is a follow up to the work I did in 2008 but this time targeting young people who think they don't need the flu jab but in fact the virus creeps up and gets them!

 The campaign has not been launched yet, but here is a sneak preview at some of the stills from the ad.
Agency: The Leith Agency - Producer: Yasmeen Ismail Rhumbaba - Director/designer/animator: Sandra Salter

Wedding Espresso 2002

Stuck in the Muddy Lagoon

Stuck In The Muddy Lagoon - my self-help self-publishing premier is available from blurb.com

I spent a week in Venice in 2007 trying to draw myself happy again and this is the resulting sketchbook. The trip didn't quite work out as I'd hoped, instead scratching the surface of some darker anxieties that lingered around me like the smell of bad drains. You can see the whole book here in the blurb bookstore and meet espresso Jesus, spooky letterboxes, three wise men and copious volumes of coffee and prosecco.

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1550540

Some ums

Various modes of being as experienced by myself and I suspect a few others.

Ps. what do you reckon, the white background works better than brown paper?

Look Out!

Is it any wonder this keeps happening?

Off The Rails in 1994

Now here's an old sketchbook from 1994 - We were a couple of 22yr olds scribbling our way around Europe for a month or so. It got hotter and hotter as we reached Sicily, then we slowly put our clothes back on as we made our way Northwards to the reality of post college life.

Anisketchbookmation

Here are some pictures from a trip to Venice. I am beginning to extract the threads of my journey so I can knit them into something worthwhile. I walked around a lot on my own slowly going a bit crazy and I think that has to be what the film is. I was trying to get away.. but I couldn't get rid of myself. Stuck in the Muddy Lagoon!

Fast Spin Fling

My first film for Channel 4, began as a the animator in residence at the Museum of the Moving Image 1997

In a struggle to commit to a single narrative, I created this convoluted story that is wound around a few characters and some knicker puns. Whilst the whole film works a rhythm and comes to a satisfying 'plonk' at the end.. i think it still seems a film about not much. I am happy this was my first film after college and it went to loads of festivals, but I never really got any further with this approach. It feels a bit like my first piece of knitting. Tight, patchy tension, overworked. but still holds together in a funny sort of way.

Flu

Illustration for 'Healthier Scotland' created at Sweetworld TV with The Leith Agency, as part of the governments campaign to help protect the vunerable against flu 2008/9. We made an animated commercial with Scottish animation celebrity Iain Gardner and the design was rolled out across Scotland in the shape of billboards, paper ads, mailouts, posters and stationary.

You can see the animation here www.infoscotland.info/flu

3 Brief Thoughts

A short film made at the Royal College of Art in 1995 - These days I find relationships with men as brief as my knickers!

Animation Sandra Ensby - music Jim Howard

The Royal College of Art library was being computerised and it didn't take long for us animation students to find drawer upon drawer of library cards in a skip down Jay Mews. It took a little while for me to figure out how I could make use of them and then I tried just drawing straight. Animation with no lightbox. Drawn in 5 days. Coloured in by me and boyfriend at the time (Sorry Nik!), whilst watching telly one night. It sort of worked.

Measles

Made for the Secret Policemans Ball in 2006, winner of a British Animation Award public choice catagory. Voice by Brian Cox written by Lisle Turner animation by Yasmeen Ismail and Sandra Ensby (now Salter) at Sweetworld TV. We are hugely indebted to Emma Lazenby who saved our bacon with the compositing and editing of this film!!

Tree Draw

My first attempt at rallying a group together for a drawing event in the summer 2006, on Hampstead Heath in the rain. Loads of animators and non-animators braved the grim weather and Sweetworld TV provided the pencils and MUJI notebooks.


Most of the books were photographed that day - so it was pretty much a film in a day. Music is by We Are The Boggs We Are.

Cul de Sac

Based on the poem by Benedict Newbery, Cul de sac is a short animated film about small-town suburban life, and the extraordinary dignity and care with which ordinary people deal with grief, illness, fear and hope.


Benedict created a storyboard which I then embelished with a series of small-scale watercolour sequences, which were all drawn in one sketchbook then scanned and composited. This was a great move forward in my quest for studioless animation practise. The music is by Paul A Murphy. The voice recording is Benedict Newbery, the poet himself.

More on Benedict's poetry can be found here www.benedictnewbery.com

Shortlisted for the 2008 Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin

Directed by Benedict Newbery & Sandra Ensby (now Salter) 2008

Throwaway

My third short film with Channel4. It was an idea that grew out of many broken relationships - Saying all the wrong things.. not listening and mostly missing the point!! A highlight of making this film was hunting down Lukas Simonis of VRiL who did the music with Nina Hitz - Their latest album here Listen to the Resonance podcast about The Fatal Duckpond here!