PRINTMAKING: Fish Five

animation, Art, experimental, Film, printmaking February 8, 2022

This is the fifth in a series of six posts documenting the production of the experimental prints that I created with woodblock printmaking techniques for both gallery exhibition and also as frames in my experimental animated film Toxic Fish (see photos below). The fish in this sequence is the gizzard shad. Its static shape on the woodblock contrasts with the flooding of coloured toxins from commercial pollution which are overlaid around it which eventually poison the fish. Variations in the volume of ink applied to the block plus the choice of hue produced a range of similar but different outcomes that when edited in sequence contributed to the creation of the illusion of movement. The film was screened at CINANIMA, the Animation Festival in Esphino, Portugal, and at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, and also at the Big Day Out rock festival in Sydney (see certificate and photo on previous post: PRINTMAKING: Fish Four).

A woodblock print with overlaid hand-colouring for my animated film Toxic Fish-©1990 Dr. Michael Hill. (Print of image for animation, green ink over black shape of fish with red and green ink smudged overlay, for use as single and double frame sequence of the animation at 24 f.p.s.)

A woodblock print with overlaid hand-colouring for my animated film Toxic Fish-©1990 Dr. Michael Hill. (Print of image for animation, orange ink over black shape of fish with blue and grey ink smudged overlay, for use as single and double frame sequence of the animation at 24 f.p.s.) This print also stamped to be sold for framing as static artwork.
A woodblock print with overlaid hand-colouring for my animated film Toxic Fish-©1990 Dr. Michael Hill. (Print of image for animation, pink ink over black shape of fish with pink ink smudged overlay, for use as single and double frame sequence of the animation at 24 f.p.s.)
A woodblock print with overlaid hand-colouring for my animated film Toxic Fish-©1990 Dr. Michael Hill. (Print of image for animation, green ink over black shape of fish with green ink smudged overlay, for use as single and double frame sequence of the animation at 24 f.p.s.)

A woodblock print with overlaid hand-colouring for my animated film Toxic Fish-©1990 Dr. Michael Hill. (Print of image for animation, pink ink over black shape of fish with red and pink ink smudged overlay, for use as single and double frame sequence of the animation at 24 f.p.s.)
A woodblock print with overlaid hand-colouring for my animated film Toxic Fish-©1990 Dr. Michael Hill. (Print of image for animation, red ink over black shape of fish with red and grey ink smudged overlay, for use as single and double frame sequence of the animation at 24 f.p.s.)
Some examples of the fish art from the animation, as in the image above, have been added to the Doctor Comics website (doctorcomics.com) under the post heading PRINTMAKING: Fish 1, 2, 3 etc.(see links below at the bottom of this post).

All photos postcards, postcard art and printmaking by Dr. Michael Hill aka Doctor Comics.

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Creator and former Director of the Master of Animation course at the University of Technology, Sydney, Dr. Michael Hill has a Master's degree in animation and a PhD in comics studies, prompting his introduction on ABC Radio as “Doctor Comics”. A member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Comic Art, and former member of the Comics Grid Journal of Comics Scholarship and the Advisory Committee of the Q-Collection Comic Book Preservation Project, he has delivered public lectures on Comics, Anime and Manga and held academic directorships in Interdisciplinary Studies, Animation, Design and Visual Communication. Having donated his collection of research materials on Australian alternative comics to the National Library of Australia he is now active in the artistic domain, writing, drawing and printmaking, creating art postcards and prints and his own graphic novel Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions of Doctor Comics.

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