ABOVE: Film maker and animator Ian Harding (foreground) on the set of one of his tributes to No.73 tributes. Pictured behind him are Christy Chan, Ruth McGeown, Frances Harding (Ian’s sister) and Dug Ferguson. The famous door is actually a replica made by Ian.
Creating a new world: one man and his mouse A guitar-playing mouse, a gardening lion and a stately home owned by a couple of frogs. Welcome to the world of Zey the mouse, the animated creation of King’s Lynn’s Ian Harding...
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hen Peter Jackson made his momumental Lord of the Rings trilogy in 1999-2000, he was helped by a production crew of hundreds and a vast amount of CGI – but the Oscar-winning director started in his back garden armed only with an 8mm camera and figures made from Plasticene. Ian Harding can sympathise with such humble beginnings – when the King’s Lynn based animator and film maker KLmagazine July 2013
isn’t building sets, he’s writing stories and planning storyboards; and when he isn’t behind the camera, he’s busy editing the end results. Originally from Swaffham, Ian studied art and graphic design at college (where he was the first person to achieve a Triple Distinction) before working at Norwich Puppet Theatre for a couple of years, where he received a thorough grounding in set design, stagecraft and the joys of working with articulated figures. In his own time, Ian then set about producing three tribute
episodes of the children’s television show No.73 (“I’m probably the programme’s biggest fan,” he says) which ran from 1982-88 and starred (among others) Sandi Toksvig, Neil Buchanan, Andrea Arnold and Kim Goody. The project – which eventually saw the set take over most of Ian’s living space – attracted a great deal of interest from local media, and one of the episodes had a fund-raising premiere at Norwich Puppet Theatre. Eventually uploaded to You Tube, the 81