Oran Rose is an animator and printmaker based in Leeds, originally from Huddersfield. They opt to utilise more experimental, analogue art techniques, such as printmaking, in their animated works. Their work in particular focuses on pushing traditionally praised, clean animation styles by taking digitally created animation and forcing it to feature real world textures and contain human error.
The first ever national (non-London based) gay pride march in the UK took place in 1981 in the textiles town of Huddersfield, where I was born and raised. Despite having lived there my whole life and identifying as LGBTQ+ for a decent portion of that time, I had not been made aware of this event until overhearing a discussion at a family gathering when I was 20. Upon further research, the local archives had little but one newspaper article gathered surrounding the whole event. How could something so monumental for the northern queer community be so poorly documented? Cesspit of Freedom was born of my desire to see this event acknowledged in the present via the power of animation.
It was brought to life by Oran’s ever-growing love of traditional printmaking techniques, utilising screen printing on fabric to link the medium to the setting. This was done by creating the animation digitally using ToonBoom Harmony and then separating the three colour palettes into two, black and white “positives” – each representing the pink or the blue (or yellow/red) inked areas respectively, with the purple being a product of these inks overlapping. These positives were then developed onto screens, with ink squeegeed through the mesh to create the frames on the cotton that you see today. These frames were then photographed and composited together using a mixture of Dragonframe and Adobe Premiere.
I wouldn’t have been able to make this film without my wonderful course mates; Tâm Nguyễn and Sam Farrow, alongside the support of West Yorkshire Queer Stories and Leeds Arts University’s printmaking staff. You all made this happen.
