The following is a series of short, silent, heritage-themed shadow-puppet animations, commissioned by National Trust in the Midlands for their social media channels from 2018 onwards. Some films use stop-motion, some real-time animation. Atmospheric lighting and natural plant pigments (tea and coffee) combine with handmade papercut shadow-puppets to evoke bygone days.

A Georgian Christmas

A Georgian Christmas (Nov 2023), referencing the Rotunda and the Georgian Theatre Royal at Bury St Edmunds - mostly animated in real time, using articulated shadow-puppets with rods.
A Georgian Christmas

Lest We Forget (2021): shadow-puppet and coffee pigment stop-motion animation
Lest We Forget - National Trust in the Midlands .
The film references the following National Trust properties and WW1/WW2 connections:

Melford Hall, fields of poppies in the Suffolk countryside
Attingham Hall and WW1 convalescence ward
Belton Hall WW1 Hospital
Oxburgh Hall and Upton Hall Kitchen Garden, Dig for Victory
Tranmer House, Sutton Hoo
Women's Land Army, Lumberjills of the Women's Timber Corps, Culford, Suffolk
Sheringham Hall, Sheringham Park and Pillbox
Dunwich Heath, Operation Kruschen 1943
Clumber Park Memorial
Blickling Hall RAF Oulton, Norfolk

Loïs painted each scene using coffee pigment to suggest the inky sepia tone of old photographs, adding small amounts of finer detail digitally. Each human figure is cut out of paper and hinged with paper fasteners to articulate the movement of limbs and gestures one frame at a time. It takes at least an hour to create a second's worth of stop-motion footage.


WWi Centenary 1918 - 2018

Created for projection onto the facade of Sheringham Hall, Norfolk, to mark the silence on 11th November 2018
Lest We Forget 1918 - 2018