Doors Open premiere
Saturday the 17th of September 2022 sees the release of a short animated film about art called Doors Open, by Orcadian artist Martin Laird. The film was created for Doors Open Days 2022, supporting Scotland’s Year of Stories. It will premiere at 12pm, on YouTube, with the artist on hand to chat online.
Doors Open is a somewhat surreal tour through the digital realm, exploring the artist’s work, influences, and sources of inspiration. It references other artists, Orcadian history and culture, personal experience, and the phenomena of the ‘Caledonian antisyzygy‘, which is the supposed dual nature of the Scottish character (often exemplified by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but in this case by Jack Renton).
The film is narrated by Graham McConnell, and features both animated and filmed sequences covering work past, present, and soon-to-be released. Much of the imagery was created specifically for the film.
Doors Open was created in the free and open-source 3d modelling and animation program Blender. Most of the artworks featured were hand-painted and photographed, although some drawn digitally. Among things to be seen in the virtual gallery and studio space are The Fairy Dance, an animated folk tale, the illustrated history book Rebel Orkney, and a sequence from the forthcoming Orcadian Stories films, which Martin is producing for The Orkney News in association with Museums Galleries Scotland.
