Who I Am and What I Want is one of two new Chris Shepherd shorts hitting the festival circuit this year. Made with artist David Shrigley, Who I Am is hilarious and disturbing. © David Shrigley/Chris Shepherd 2005.

It’s not unusual to receive multiple festival submissions from an animator, but it is a surprise when both are strong works. That’s the case this year with British animator, Chris Shepherd. The director of the deliciously dark Dad’s Dead (how’s that for some awesome alliteration) recently completed Who I Am and What I Want, a hilarious and disturbing scribble film about a fucked up guy in denial named Pete — made in collaboration with Scottish artist, David Shrigley — and Silence is Golden, a live-action/animation hybrid about a young boy, his boozer mom and their crazy old neighbor.

The idea of collaborating with Shrigley began in 1998 when Shepherd was working on the British sketch TV show, Big Train. “I read a book by David called, Why We Got the Sack from the Museum, recalls Shepherd. “It reminded me of school. I got in trouble one time for drawing all over the walls of the sixth form common room. These drawings did not get me top marks. Obscenity was not in fashion then. The headmaster was not happy, he said I’d blown my chances of being the head boy and I was heading straight to the chicken giblet factory to be a packer when I left school. Thank you sir. David’s book spoke volumes to me, the rawness of it took me back to those school days.”

The rawness in Shrigley’s previous work spoke to Shepherd (above), and they spent next five years talking about collaborating until they agreed that Shrigley’s Who I Am and What I Want should be the basis for a film.

Shepherd then asked Shrigley if he wanted to collaborate on an animation film. Shrigley agreed and then the two artists spent the next five years talking about it. Finally, Shrigley showed Shepherd his book, Who I Am and What I Want, and both agreed that the story should be the basis for the film.

Shrigley, though, didn’t just send his story to Shepherd and be done with it, the two collaborated on every aspect of the production. “We bounced the script between us via email trying to make the book work as a film. We decided early on that we would use a voice over and not have written text in picture. Once we were happy with the script I did a rough animatic and from that David drew a kit of parts for me: a page of street furniture, trees, people, etc. From this we built a world for Pete to live in. So a lot of what you see in the film is David’s original drawings.”

Complementing Shrigley’s perfectly primitive drawings is the narration of actor Kevin Eldon. Eldon’s machine gun pace and smartass tone — not to forget Shrigley’s sharp, sparse text — are key to the film’s success. “David was originally going to do the voice himself,” says Shepherd. “I kept thinking back to when I was on Big Train and a sketch where Kevin Eldon played the Devil working in an office where Jesus was his boss. His character was quite belligerent. His voice was in my head when we read through the script. We both thought Kevin was the right choice. It was clever the way Kevin played Pete. An educated man in a state of total denial. Like he’s holding in all of the madness. An academic on the verge of a mental breakdown. You could have played him as the crazy man, but we both knew that could have been a big mistake.”

Silence is Golden emerged from a very different background. “I tend to be a bit of a magpie, I use elements from my youth in my work, but I mix everything up, stories people tell me, things I’ve overheard on the bus. I’m a very nosy person. I don’t wear a watch as I figure I then have an excuse to look into people’s living room. I’ve seen all kinds of things that way.”