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Christa Jarrold: A Few Of My Favourite Things
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The Jelly director shares the lido, the Lady and the lo-fi textures behind her squishy universe.
Known for a squishy, claymation-inspired CGI universe populated by awkward, funny characters just trying to exist in the modern world, Christa Jarrold’s work is full of charm.
Filling her studio with tactile experiments, visual references and things that make her laugh, here the Jelly director shares the handmade textures, seaside views and feline interruptions that shape her creations.
The Lido Sign
I live by the sea, so every morning I take a walk for coffee and am forced to look at this absolutely disgusting view.
Blue water, open sky, fresh air, it’s terrible.
Sucks to be me.
The Clay
Most of my work is made digitally, but I’m always looking for ways to stop it feeling too polished or sterile.
I make textures from plasticine and clay, scan them, and use them as materials for my CGI characters.
It gives the finished work a fake-handmade quality, digitally constructed, but with fingerprints and imperfections still visible.
Fimo is my current drug of choice.
I love that it encourages me to work with my hands, make a mess and embrace accidents.
Those physical textures bring a warmth and wonkiness to the characters that would be difficult to create entirely on a computer.
The Clay Mouth
I tend to give all my characters the same bucked, slightly goofy teeth.
It creates a thread of visual consistency between them, but, more importantly, I just think it makes every character look funnier.
The clay mouth sits in the studio as a kind of three-dimensional character-design reference.
Perhaps I’m subconsciously inspired by my own less-than-perfect teeth.
Either way, a neat row of flawless veneers would never have the same personality.
The Art Books
Art books are essential whenever I feel stuck.
Looking online can quickly become repetitive, particularly when an algorithm keeps presenting variations of things it already knows you like.
Picking up a book feels more deliberate and much more likely to lead somewhere unexpected.
At the moment, I’m particularly interested in Hieronymus Bosch, Jonny Negron, Robert and Aline Crumb, and illuminated manuscripts.
I love work that is densely populated, slightly grotesque, funny and full of tiny narrative details.
Flicking through these books often gives me the visual jolt I need to start making something again.
The Cat
My cat, Lady, is a useful reminder to slow down, take naps and sit directly on anything with corners, particularly if that thing is important, fragile or currently being used.
Having an animal in the studio stops the space from becoming too serious.
Cats are completely indifferent to deadlines, render times and whether an image is “working”, which is probably a healthy perspective to have nearby.
The Mechanical Keyboard
This is the object people comment on most whenever I share photographs of my studio online.
It’s a mechanical keyboard made by a Japanese company whose brand name I can’t remember.
My gaming computer, which I use for 3D work, isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing object in the room.
The keyboard compensates for that by adding some colour to the setup.
Digital work can involve spending hours making tiny adjustments, so it helps when the tools I’m touching every day feel playful rather than purely functional.
