I like to describe the Paper Cinema as live animation for live music.

It’s the accidental meeting of inkblots, photocopied illustrations, angle-poise lamps and video technology which magically brings a cast of hand-drawn, hand-animated puppets to life. It’s definitely not shadow puppetry and nor is it strictly animation as all the images are still. It’s just something we invented.

It started about six years ago. I was living in Bournemouth where there was a really vibrant local band scene. I had studied fine art at Canterbury and was working doing bits of illustration and graphic design when one of the bands, Little Boat, asked me to do something visual to accompany their set. My dad worked as an illustrator for Disney, so I guess it runs in the family. I did a live animated fairytale for them. Shortly after that another band called Perico asked me to do some stuff and it all spiralled from there.

We spent three years learning how to use a camera and now do live feeds straight on to a projector. The audience sees us scrabbling around at the front making a film with the sound effects and musical score taking shape right in front of their eyes. It’s about placing the audience in a dual world where they witness both the real-time construction of the film and the finished product at the same time. We use a lot of cinematic techniques such as panning in and out playing around with focus to pull characters in and out of vision. It can be a bit like Jackanory.

In 2007 the Battersea Arts Centre asked if we could create something to be used as part of Punchdrunk’s Masque of the Red Death. We did a piece called King Pest based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, which was really well received. After that we got several other commissions and in 2008 went to Edinburgh and did a piece called The Night Flyer, which won various awards including a Fringe First and a Total Theatre award for experiment and innovation.

The musical side is always really important to us and our reactions to the musicians are direct – we riff off the music and they riff of us. In 2009 we did a piece about a fantastical journey through London’s east end with Roger Eno, younger brother of Brian. And recently we did a major work with an experimental accordion player from Finland called Kimmo Pohjonen. We projected our paper puppets onto a 100ft high cliff in an abandoned sea quarry called Winspit on the Dorset coast and had Kimmo standing on a massive stack of rock playing against the light of the moon with bats flying everywhere. It was an amazing atmosphere.

We are now in the process of making a feature length version of the Odyssey. We never work with words and as this is a story essentially about a hero winning by his guile and his clever tongue, sustaining the dramatic arc is going to be a challenge. But it’s the kind of challenge we are looking to move on to. I was finally able to give up my day job two years ago and now we’re trying to work out how we can do more stuff on a grander scale. For something that started as a hobby, we’ve done all right. I think it’s because Paper Cinema is something that no one else does.

Nic Rawling was talking to Lena Corner.

Image is from Nightflyer, a BAC commission. For more information, go to the Paper Cinema's website.