Sport Meets Art with Richard Swarbrick
fluoro spoke with artist, animator, lover of the world game, Richard Swarbrick about transforming his passion for art and sport into a genre. He and captures the emotion of football through his creations.
After creating his first football animation at art college, the impact of Swarbrick’s work and style has organically progressed. Swarbrick’s process has developed from using a pen and paper to digital tools. Working from live action footage, Swarbrick creates an edit before painting over the top and transforming the emotion of the game into an animation.
Swarbrick’s journey has seen him form a community with other like-minded artists who together have grown to carve football art as a genre. A recent exhibition in London, ‘Fantasista Exhibition of Football Art’, displayed a selection of their works and featured artists such as Sir Peter Blake, Zoran Lucic, Stanley Chow and Swarbrick.
(f) You have been referred to as a ‘Football Animator’, what inspired the initial idea to explore football through art?
(RS) I was initially inspired by artist and film maker Chris Shepherd. His animations are not sport related but they are ‘painted memories’ of life growing up in Liverpool in the 1970s. It was Shepherd’s work that opened my eyes to the idea of using hand painted animation to create a feeling of nostalgia.
I made my first football animation at art college in 1999; a flip book of David Ginola’s goal vs Barnsley in the FA Cup – hand drawn using charcoal. All those Saturday afternoons spent at White Hart Lane watching players like Ginola, Gazza, Ardelez, Hoddle and Waddle were, of course, a big inspiration.
(f) What has been the reaction to football art as a genre?
(RS) I am lucky to be involved in the football art scene, I feel like I’ve accidentally stumbled into a rapidly growing genre that is being afforded the credibility it deserves. I joined Twitter a few years ago and before I knew it I was part of the ‘football art’ community. These types of unofficial communities that exist in the realms of social media tend to be mutually supportive; I found it inspiring to share ideas with other artists.
(f) What measures do you take to ensure your animations capture the emotion of sport?
(RS) It is important to me that my films capture the emotion of sport and this is usually achieved in the edit, before a single frame has been painted. The most important factor is the music that, for me, should not be a decorative element but an essential part of the narrative drive of the film. I am particularly inspired by the way Stanley Kubrick uses music in film and with that in mind I always try to choose something that will conflict with the emotional tone rather than seek to heighten it.
I like to carefully construct an edit so that all the elements of image, music and sound are orchestrated in a way that feels seamless and elegant. This should create a feeling of harmony that will add to the emotional quality of the film. I paint in a loose sketchy style but if I spot something that will add to the emotional pull of the film, such as a facial expression or a look in someone’s eye, I will highlight it by painting it in more detail.
(f) What role does branding play in your work?
Conveniently for me, considering that I work in advertising, my painting style lends itself to branding. Most artists paint using an infinite colour palette but I like to restrict myself to two, three or four colours – a choice often dictated by the subject matter. When making a commercial for The Sun newspaper for their coverage of Euro 2012, I was able to restrict my colour palette to The Sun’s brand colours of red and white, which also happen to be the colours of the England football team.
(f) What is in the pipeline for the future?
(RS) My next project is a music video for an exciting young British band called China Rats and is a complete departure from my hand painted football films. It is a stop-frame animation made out of money (coins and banknotes) for a song called N.O.M.O.N.E.Y.
The song spells out the words ‘no money’ in much the same way as Aretha Franklin’s R.E.S.P.C.T and I believe it will become an anthem for the ‘no money’ generation. The video is similar to my other work in that I’m painting over live action footage (of the band) but instead of painting with paint I’m painting with coins.
