People are so media-savvy these days.

Photographing Bucket Boy in public, I inevitably get Questions.

“Sorry, I couldn’t pass by without asking what you’re doing,” said a guy on a bike.

“Is it a sculpture?” people want to know. “Is it art?”

“It’s an animation puppet,” I explained to a passing mum with a young child. “I make it move by filming it, time-lapse style.”

“He walks on the compooter,” added my three-year-old daughter, helpfully.

The mother turned to her son.

“We could do that,” she said. “Shoot a bunch of photos, compile them, maybe as a PowerPoint presentation...”

“...And put it on YouTube!” finished the tot.

Damn it. There was me thinking my film-making pretentions put me in some kind of artistic elite.

But, actually, a few Bucket Boy imitators on YouTube would be great. One of the best things about animation is its capacity to make people think “I could do that...”

“Thank you,” the woman smiled as she continued on her way. “You’ve inspired us.”

This is Bucket Boy

Bucket boy is a character who comes to life from everyday litter and junk. He begins as just a bucket and broom – shuffling along the ground with a couple of bricks for support – but gradually evolves a humanlike appearance, and humanlike behaviour. His problem is isolation. As an animated character in a time lapse world, he exists in a different timeframe from real people. Lost in a sprawling urban environment of waste grounds, alleys and underpasses, he experiences passersby as fleeting ghosts, blurry and incorporeal. How can he hope to communicate with them?

I’m still developing Bucket Boy’s story. My aim in building him is to test the feasibility of shooting stop-motion on location, with a puppet much bigger than the conventional twelve inches. By shooting a series of shorts – starting with the extremely short one below – I hope to expand my knowledge of location shooting, time lapse technique, photography and creative use of sound.

A dead man in my spare room

Ever fancied summoning up the virtual apparition of an executed murderer? This website tells you how.

I had a quick play to see if it would work - and it did, first time. It’s the same concept as this iPad app, but with pleasingly sepulchral overtones.