G-aaah

Elizabeth Hobbs' animation - including The Emperor and The Witches - frequently involves water colour paints that shift and swim about to reveal her narratives. Here, she plays a similar trick with an old school Underwood 315 typewriter to create a flight of fantasy recreating Amy Johnson's solo plane journey from England to Australia.

The animator has taken her inspiration from Johnson's job - as a solicitor's typist - before her record-breaking flight. The typewriter is, if you'll forgive the pun, the perfect vehicle to offer carriage to this story. Hobbs exploits the machine's motion - from left to right of a page - as a way of bolstering the sense of movement.

As with her water colours, she quickly draws you into her 'game', as a string of characters quickly come to represent a plane in our mind. She shows the craft from every angle, wittily changing its letter construction and gives a sense of time passing from day into night.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you also retain the image of that secretary, going from pecking out client letters to taking on the world. It's a powerful thought.

Watch the film:

G-AAAH - Elizabeth Hobbs from Amy Johnson Festival on Vimeo.