015 Babel Fish
(into the ear)
Items from the early stages of the Babel Fish sequence, the first half of which constituted the initial pilot test piece for the BBC.

10 pencil drawings, numbers 2 to 11, by Rod Lord on tracing paper and originally registered in place with Sellotape onto punched 305x252 mm animation paper. The Sellotape has inevitably dried out over 30 years and become unstuck in many instances. I have not made any attempt to repair anything, so some tracing paper drawings are loose from their registration paper and some are missing it.

These were the start of the process that became the section of the Babel Fish animation sequence where the human ear zooms up to close up.

From these outlines tracings were made with Rotring pens onto animation cells which were then reversed out by a contact exposure onto photolith film for back lighting under the rostrum camera.