Welsh Awakenings was originally going to be my second collaboration with Dan Pugh (following Matthew Henry: The Life and Times of the Bible Commentator), and was originally titled Land of Revivals, but it was both postponed and retitled to avoid clashes with Revival: the Work of God.
My first involvement came in early 2021, producing a teaser poster and an animated title graphic to support Dan's kickstarter campaign for what was then titled Land of Revivals, a film documenting the long history of spiritual renewals in his homeland of Wales. The funds were raised, but for various reasons Dan (and I) then got diverted into a related project, titled simply Revival, which was on much the same subject but took a more global overview. The Welsh film effectively went on hiatus for more than a year, but never really went away.
In 2023, with the technically-challenging Revival now firmly in the rear-view mirror and the newly-retitled Welsh Awakenings largely filmed, I was brought back in to finish what I'd started with the motion graphics. Aside from retooling the main title animation, my primary job on this production was (again) to produce map clips showing where each part of the story takes place. With this film taking a much more localised subject, I had the huge advantage that I could work with a flat map instead of messing around with a 3D globe model, which allowed me to use more traditional, analogue media including watercolours and calligraphy inks for some of the map components. Dan and I were also able to scratch a collective itch over the use of Celtic-style fonts, which we'd wanted to do on Revival but didn't quite get away with.
The other major element this time around was a collection of hand-drawn sketches showing one or two key landmarks for each of the locations discussed (including but not limited to castles, chapels, farmhouses, a couple of statues, and David Lloyd George's grave), running to thirty-odd in total. Most of the sketches show the landmarks in their present-day condition, although there are one or two (most notably a chapel in Bala) where time and modern-day repair works haven't been kind so I opted to work from older reference images and show a building in an earlier state.
I tried several technical approaches to create a smooth camera move zooming in from an overview of Wales toward a particular location. Most of them went horribly wrong, with the various elements refusing to stay matched up correctly. In the end, despite having thought I'd get away without using Blender this time around, I found it was actually my best option to get the effect I wanted - so although the motion graphics for Revival and for Welsh Awakenings look very different, they've actually got a lot more in common behind the scenes than you might expect.
