The Templers – Stephen and Ruth
I first encountered Stephen’s work at a cool little café in Wellington called Deluxe. On the walls was an exhibition of painted old style sailing ships and figures that reminded me of the Mexican Day of the Dead. I immediately thought of the Fatcat & Fishface song ‘The Wreck of the Diddley’ that I had been wanting to tranform into an animated music video. Stephen’s work was perfect.
I emailed him and he was keen, even though he’d never worked in animation before. As it turned out, Stephen’s sister Ruth Templer was actually a computer whizz, and we decided that Stephen would hand paint the illustrations, scan them into his computer, and designer sister Ruth (who lived in Auckland) would animate the images. It turned out to be a great idea, and the resulting clip went on to screen at festivals in New Zealand, Melbourne, Korea and London. Not bad for a first try!!!
Since then, Stephen has come to represent the visual side of Fatcat & Fishface, and now fleaBITE. He and Ruth also made the clip ‘Nightclub’ about New Zealand native birds grooving in the dark. This time I was able to find a sponsor (thanks Supreme Coffee) and actually pay them both something decent.
- fleaBITE