For more than 40 years Emma Calder forged a distinctive career as an independent animator and producer, working in short film, music video and children’s television. Madame Potatoe, her 1983 graduation project from the Royal College of Art, was an installation featuring a potato-print animated film, a cookbook, T-shirts and a lifesize motorised sculpture of the character eating crisps and watching itself on TV. Four decades on and Emma was still pushing boundaries, picking up the Cutting Edge award at the 2024 British Animation Awards for her short Beware of Trains (2022).
Emma, who has died aged 65 from cancer, was a slightly built but vocal figure in the British animation scene, never prepared to accept the increasing drought of funding for independent animation that was a feature of the early 21st century. When she founded Pearly Oyster Productions in 1989 with her creative partner Ged Haney, many British animators such as Nick Park, Candy Guard and Joanna Quinn were finding unprecedented support for their work, particularly through Channel 4, which funded as well as screened their shorts.
