Final Animation Camp Screening

This morning we had the screening of all four of the summer camp animations. I am having difficulty posting the final flash animations on the blog, perhaps the sizes are too big. At any rate, I have posted the final animations on my YouTube site.

Here is the Vanity Animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHYzw1LCSLk&feature=channel_page

Here is the Teamwork Animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQfNmTwGfjw&feature=channel_page

Here is the Funny Crazy Animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Uccwm36yU&feature=channel_page

Here is the Discoveries in the Garden Animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRG6LkL7fbs&feature=channel_page

We were very fortunate to have Raquel Coelho as a guest speaker. Ms. Coelho is an Animation professor at San Jose State University and has worked at many animation house in The San Francisco Bay Area. She shared her puppet making process with the children and parents. She was a wonderfully engaging speaker and she had a lot of materials to share.














































Below: Some of the puppet making materials Raquel brought in.



















Below: Puppet figure from one of her books.























Raquel also brought some of her beautifully illustrated children books from Brazil. The illustrations were photos of lovely shadow boxes depicting in puppets the history of theater from around the world. For the conclusion she shared with us a wonderful short animation she worked on called Moon Girl. Below: Raquel brought in one of her shadow box pieces. This one depicts the famous photographer Eadweard Muybridge.























Detail:

Animation Camp Session 2, rough drafts of animations

Here are the rough drafts of animations from the second session of animation camp. The children were really creative and I loved the different stories each came up with. The children imported each of their still images into Premiere Elements. The audio they recorded on the last day of the workshop. I cleaned up these sound files with the freeware Audacity. This animation, The Funny Crazy Animation, is almost completed. Audio is inserted. I will do a little Photoshop retouch to eliminate some of the string and wire supports. The end credit text will also be added.



The tales in the animation Discoveries in the Garden all have garden or park scenes. The figures in this group worked quite well with the magnet feet and cookie tray. I will be doing a little bit of Photoshop retouching of wires and such in this animation as well.


We will be having a screening of the children's work next Monday. We are also fortunate to have Raquel Coelho present a few of her animations, her puppets and children's books during this gathering. She is a professor in the Animaiton Department at San Jose State and has worked at DreamWorks and other Bay Area animation studios. I am really excited to see her work in person and know the children will be inspired by her work, too. She has been very gracious in agreeing to speak to us. We were also very lucky to have a tour at De Anza College's Animation Department with this group as well last Thursday.

Plastics and puppets!

I have started to research new materials for my animation classes. Although I love the colorful oil based clays I have been using in the kid's workshops, it sure is messy! The color gets on everything and the resulting clay figures and sets are not so permanent (easy to sit on and squash). So I have been researching an alternative for at least parts of the puppets and sets. I have found some info posted on a product called Friendly Plastic that sounds really cool and perfect for a classroom. It softens in warm water and then the child can mold it in sections over a wire frame work. It air hardens and can be painted. I will be researching armature wire next. Anyway here is where I purchased my Friendly Plastic. http://www.sunshinecrafts.com/body_friendly_plastic.html It was the cheapest I could find in my web searching. I can't wait for it to get shipped to me as I want to experiment with it and see if it really hold up well on the armature and if it takes paint well. I would be happy to have found a cleaner material that doesn't warp with handling.

















I have also been talking with an animation instructor at San Jose State who is also a puppet maker, children book illustrator and musician (Renaissance Woman!). I hope to have her come as a guest speaker and talk with my students this summer. Her name is Raquel Coelho. Here is her site.
http://www.raquelcoelho.com/













Wonderful figure above created by Raquel Coelho.