Day Three of Claymation, Pet Shop and Fairy Party

Today the children started filming their animations. We had two stages and two cameras working. Here the girls are filming their fairies. We filmed in my garage. Thankfully it was not super hot today! It did get hot with all the lights, though. The children rotated through roles of director, animator and camera person.


































The girls picked flowers from my garden to decorate the set. I love the elegant feel. Each of the girls spent a lot of time carefully creating their sets and costumes. They created wings of floral wire (24 gauge). They cut lace and fabric and then hot melted the material to the wings. The wings were tied on with fishing thread. We use this fishing thread to make the fairies fly, too.
















































































This fairy was created by Brittany, the oldest girl in the group. I really like how she styled the hair and the outfit she created. All the girl's garments are quite sophisticated in color and style. The next fairy down is Nina's and the bottom one is Kadin's.














































Here the boys are filming scenes from their pet store animation.
They used the shadow set back lighting a lot. It was interesting listening to the boys verses the girls. The boys were quite silent in their interaction as they snapped their shots. The girls were much more verbal in discussing their shots and each move. It was an entertaining contrast!




















































































Below: Perhaps my favorite frame of the whole animation. Mitchell took this bug eye view of being caught in the net.

Stop Motion Animation Class Day 2

Today the children created most of their sets and refined their storyboards. It was a busy second day as we plan to start filming tomorrow.
Below: a few sketches from yesterday and the cages and animals created by the boys:











































Shadow set for Ed's insect:
















































Shadow puppet parts for Mitchell's Thorny Devil desert scene:






























Cole used a lot of real plant materials for his sets both in the cage and for the main set. It will be interesting to see how he uses these for his shadow elements.


































The boys created smaller version of their animals to sail away in paper boats in the conclusion of the movie. These animals will also be used in the main pet shop scene. Ed taught the other boys how to make paper boats.






































The main stage for the boys set. The Pet Shop doors will slide open to show the pet store.

















Lights for the pet store.

















The girls created the set parts for their fairy story. Large trees were created of wallpaper sample sheets spray mounted onto tag board. These trees are in the background.

















Sketches:





































































They also created element for the shadow screen. These they created of real plant materials
from the yard. We hot melted these to wooden boards. This will be dramatic when back lit against the shadow screen.

















Below: images of the fairy set in progress:



































Creating the fairy party invites.























Doll in dress. The girls challenged themselves to create costuming for their fairies. Tomorrow they will make the wings and the rest of the dresses and the children will start filming!

Children Film Festival Awards

Two animations that I directed last school year won awards in The International Student Media Festival 2008.
http://www.ismf.net/ns/about.asp

Peace Thoughts won Judges Favorite. This animation was created by a first grade class. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ19kniuW1M


Claymation Situation by Cole Takara, Edward Slee and Cassie Woodard won Excellence in Media. This animation also won Best Animation in the CEEF Epic Film Festival in 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n8oKqnG2a0

The film festival will be held in Florida from November 5 to 8th and both animations will be in the festival screening. The children's school, Stevens Creek Elementary School, will receive a trophy and each child will get a medal and certificate.

Still images from Peace Thoughts:




















































Still images from Claymation Situation:

Stop Motion Photography

Today and yesterday the children took hundreds of images for their stop motion animation. We set the camera up outside and used natural lighting (a no no, I know). Yesterday we started by brainstorming on the end credits. We created a rough storyboard in six frames on a large sheet of paper. The children decided to have the house image appear small and grow big and then small again. The words "The End" would appear and then all the dream creatures would one at a time flit in and out of the scene. Brittany created the letters. We used a brown patterned paper I got at FLAX in San Francisco for the background. Our photography started with this closing scene.

Edward already knows the ropes as he created two animation with me last year.



















My son, Cole, has also done two animations with me.




















My niece enjoyed the photography. She had a steady hand. This is her first animation project.















Mitchell looking through the camera as he starts on his first set of images. He also was a steady hand and volunteered to do a lot of the photography later on, too.




















We used lots of painters blue tape, from the sets to the camera. I found some stuck to seat of my pants when I went grocery shopping later in the day.















One of the house images that the kids switched out. There were seven or so sizes so the house appears to grow closer and then shrink away in the closing credits.














Yesterday Cole, Kadin, Edward, Brittany and Mitchell photographed the scenes of their figures falling asleep in their rooms and the dream creatures coming to life. Three children were involved in the shooting of each scene: camera person, director (read the storyboard to animator) and animator. I emphasized that it was important to not move the camera or bump the stand. We used a lot of tape to keep everything in place. I created little wire loop stands to elevate the figures off the back of the set. While three children did photography, four played in the house. It was a bit of a rough day: two emotional meltdowns, a lost puppet down a crack in the deck and my three year old peed in the closet playing hide and seek. Today went much more smoothly. It was interesting to see that each child took about 30 frames of their room scene. I did not specify the number of frames for them to take.

Cassie with her set.

















During this week of classes I have had the help of one of the mothers, Alicia, and it has been great to have her assist me. When Mitchell decided to create sets of seasons for his monster to chase his character through, Alicia cut dozens of snowflakes and leaves. This was great as it occupied two other children who became the animators of these small parts. They had a great time pushing these bits across the sets. It added a lot of life to the scene. We also decided to have the other dream creatures pop in and out of these season sets to further occupy the other children and to create some interaction among the dream creatures. Lesson learned: create small parts to be moved around the sets to add texture and, more importantly, to keep more children engaged in the shooting of every scene.

One of Mitchell's four seasons set. Brittany's ballet fairy is peaking in from the side.














I scanned the puppets and printed out their parts. Alicia and I then assembled secondary small puppets of the dream puppets to fit into the room scenes. It turned out the children used these more. I still think I would have the children create their dream puppets first in the large size as it was easier for them to handle the parts. I also printed out very small dream puppets for some of the scene so that it could appear that the puppets grew by switching out one size puppet for another. Another important reminder for the children while they were shooting was to keep hands off the faces of the clay figures. When moving the arms and legs of the clay figures, it is easy to grip the head, but this damages it so it is good to often remind them to be careful of the faces. Today we also watched the Sony Bravia advertisements of the clay bunnies in N.Y., the Bouncing balls in San Francisco and the paint explosions in Scotland. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLUAbkRUvVQ&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bb8P7dfjVw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GURvHJNmGrc&feature=related We also watched Yannick Puig's "Krapooyo" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEHonyNHrIk Tomorrow we will be creating sound for the animation: voice recording and selecting copyright free music. Below are some of the scenes from the animation.

Another season (Fall) from Mitchell's sequences. Cole's creature is peaking in from the corner.















Edward's set. His dream creature brings in the groceries. That is what is sitting on the table. His creature also turns the room upside down and right side up again. I just love that it brings in a bag of groceries. We filmed more to this sequence the following day so that we had some close ups of the shopping bag.














Cole's set. His monster jumps out of a vase on the TV. It jumps around and flies back into the vase. He also created a volcano scene that we will film later.















Emily's set and doll. She knew exactly what she wanted. She created a split screen effect by butting up her painting against her room set and had her clay figure and fairy figure flit between the two scenes.















Cassie's hospital set. Her fairy gets ill from a bad fairy and her clay figure has to carry her to the hospital. I love the soft dreamy effect of her painting.















Brittany's ballet school scene. This set was really fun as it had a cut away section in the middle and the fairy floated up in the hole of the tree.