Communicating Chronic Illness through Animation: An interview with graduate Dr Nigel Smith
Dr Nigel Smith is a craft stop motion animator/director based in Bristol, running Stop Mo Studios, a non-profit CIC making animations about living with chronic conditions. He graduated from the UWE Animation MA course in 2020, and uses his experience as a doctor to inform his sensitive, well-crafted short films that communicate people’s experiences of living with dementia and stroke. We caught up with him to learn more about his work and experience at UWE.
Asked why he chose to study UWE’s animation MA, Nigel said, ‘I decided to study animation at UWE with the goal of sharing my skills in how to make animated films. I focused on craft animation, with an eye to teaching and explaining these concepts to people with health conditions such as Alzheimer’s. I find that animation suits best for sharing on social media, which is becoming one of the main ways that people learn. ‘
Photograph from one of StopMoStudios‘ ’Animate with a Smartphone ’workshops
Nigel’s graduate film ‘Mute’ was about a man losing his speech due to dementia, and since making this film Nigel has worked with charities such as Bristol After Stroke to find participants for animation workshops. Stop Mo Studios work with these participants to teach them how to make animations that illustrate their own experiences. They mainly create hybrid animations, mixing 2D animation with stop motion. He also often work with UWE Animation graduates as freelancers, offering a living wage and mentoring for recent graduates as a stepping stone to further projects.
Nigel said, ‘The problem with communicating illness is that anatomy doesn’t explain anything. Medical explanations are often anatomical, but these don’t make sense to people. I’m interested in what it means to experience a stroke, in the metaphors people use, and how we might turn it into visual metaphors. We think in images, and react more emotionally to them…moving images punch you in the gut.’
To keep up to date with StopMoStudios and Nigel’s work, follow him here:
https://www.instagram.com/stopmostudios
https://www.youtube.com/user/drnismith/videos
