The Spark That Lit the Fire

Hi there, my names Joe Barlow, and I would like to welcome you to the inaugural post of my behind the scenes blog, a space where creativity meets reflection, professional insights, and personal stories.

My intentions for this, and future blog post, is to look back on previous life event that have shaped my ongoing journey in the creative world, I wish to share experiences and knowledge with others to give and insight to the life of a post-production artist.

As todays post is the first I will start at the beginning, the very moment my eyes were opened to a world behind then lens. From a young age I've always had a vast imagination, creating worlds and stories out of nothing, I enjoyed drawing, painting, building models, and playing with Lego, all of which fuelled a creative spark hidden inside.

Amongst these I also enjoyed playing video games, at the time I wasn't playing the latest releases, nor did I have a console of any sorts, but I did enjoy playing old arcade games off of floppy disks. As well as playing games I would load up Paint and digital doodle for as long as I was aloud on the computer, these doodle soon developed in to comic book, writing stories about three brothers with super powers that went around saving people, looking back I pretty sure these were a sort of Powerpuff Girls rip-off.

One evening, while playing on the computer, my Dad showed me how to take pictures on a webcam and import them in to Windows Movie Maker. He explained how many images taken together with the slightest movement can create a second of video. As a young 10-year-old Joe, my mind was blow, this very moment shaped my entire life and I'm pretty sure it was just a way to keep me quite.

After discovering this simple technique I proceed to create a vast array of characters, each with their own backstories and motivation. I began to develop every aspect of the films, drawing storyboards, building sets, and moulding the characters out of plasticine. For anyone who’s ever given stop-frame-animation a go, you know it's a long an laborious task. I would come back from school and try to take 100's of pictures before the sun set, and the lighting was no longer good enough.

Creating these videos was a big part of my late childhood and early teen years, I had a lot of fun making them and I learnt a lot about the film making process. In retrospect what I was doing making these films was akin to the forefathers of film learning their craft for the first time, like them I was interested in what ways I could push things, experimenting and learning from my mistakes.

Fundamentally the biggest lesson I learnt from making these and looking back on it all, is to make a crap. Not one of my stop-frame-animations is by any means good, they were the product of a 10 year with a terrible webcam. They were never and will never be of interest to anyone except me, but the things I picked up making them on my own, in bedroom I still use to this day.

Now, I present to you one of my earliest ever projects, Power Battle, made in 2003, aged 10.

Whether you're a fellow creator, a curious onlooker, or somewhere in between, I invite you to follow along and join me on this journey. Together, we'll explore the intersection of creativity and life, share lessons learned, laugh at the occasional misstep, and perhaps, in the process, inspire each other to reach new heights. I aim to release these on a monthly basis, so here's to the stories we'll share and the endless possibilities that await. See you next month!