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.

Animation Camp Week 2, Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of my second session of children's stop motion animation camp. I am really learning along side the children and it is so inspiring to see their creativity in process. I especially enjoy hearing them encourage each other. This session I have the assistance of my niece and an older student entering Junior High who has been in two of my workshops. It is wonderful to have their help.

I have found that egg cartons work great for storing and staging small clay parts. For simple animation sequences this is a good way to introduce children to stop motion. The children started off creating a sequence in which clay cubes transform into two different objects and back to a cube.
































































































In the first class they created the transforming cube parts and larger people. The people were built up on twisted floral wire stick figures. Their feet are taped down to magnets. We did this to experiment with them standing on cookie sheets. I am hoping that the magnets on their feet will be able to support them on metal cookie sheets, but the magnets I used may not be strong enough once all the clay is added, in which case, we will also have wire supports behind the figure that we will try to hide.
I love the personalities of each of these figures. The children had a blast using a pasta maker to create sheets of clay for clothing. We also had a clay extruder to make strands of hair.










































































































































Storyboarding was also introduced in this first day. In fact, they did not touch any clay until they had a storyboard for their transforming cubes. We looked at sample storyboards from past students and we looked at samples online. After the children completed their storyboard and cube parts, they sketched their clay people. They were told that these figures were to interact with their magical transforming cubes. After the people were completed the children created detailed storyboards for that interaction.

Day 1:
Introduction to storyboarding
Create transforming cubes (place parts in egg cartons)
Sketch characters to interact with the cubes
Create clay figures over wire armatures (in our case thread covered floral wire and magnet feet)
Create detailed storyboard for interaction of figure with transforming cube

Last day of Animation workshop 1

Today was the last day of the animation workshop. It was an intense week of working and I think all of us were quite tired by today. I know that the children all have a renewed appreciation for the animations they see in movies and TV. It is a lot of concentration and hard work for so few seconds! Yesterday they had a very interesting tour of De Anza's Colleges Animation Department. It was good for them to know that a really excellent animation program is right here in Cupertino. Today the students recorded sound using the freeware Audacity and they imported the image files. They will add music later.

Below is the rough draft that the three boys created. Their story is about a few pet shop animals that try to escape a pet shop but then are caught again. Each animal tries to escape the shop on his own and is caught. When they are put in the same cage they use teamwork to escape and sail home in paper boats they find. The final animation will be two minutes and a music track will be added as well. All the still images and audio files were inserted into Premier Elements by the children. There is very little dialog here. They had fun creating the sound effects using paper, water in a tupperware, my creaky door and rattling keys.
Teamwork Animation:


The three girls' animation was focused on vanity and the bad consequence of it. A group of fairies are invited to a party. Two of the fairies wear big puffy showy dresses and fail to realize that it is a bowling party even though the older wiser fairy advises them not to be so dressy. The two fairies brag about how beautiful they are. At the bowling alley, one overdressed fairy knocks down a little girl's drink with her big fancy skirt. The overdressed fairies bowl terribly. They end up learning their lesson and have a yard sale to sell the big puffy dresses. The girls created a lot of dialog and even wrote out their script. There will be music added to this animation. All the still images and audio files were inserted into Premier Elements by the children.
Vanity Animation:

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!