Claymation Day Four

Here are 19 of the 29 animation sequences. I will be filming a few more at lunchtime tomorrow at Horace Cureton Elementary then again on Tuesday. Luckily I was able to borrow a second digital camera and camera stand from my friend, Melanie Woodard. She has been so generous with supplies for so many of my workshops. I have purchased a second camera, but it will take a while to ship so this worked out well. I also have been lucky to have great lights lent to me from De Anza College's Euphrat Museum's Arts In The Schools Program. I purchased various lights from Ikea in addition to the two lent from De Anza and the set up seems to be working fine. I have had to adjust the levels just a bit in Photoshop on a few animation sequences and I erased out fingers and blocks of clay in a few to make it appear that objects float. Some day it would be nice to have a longer workshop series at the school and lots of computers to show the kids how to do this image editing themselves.



BREATHER SEQUENCES
I am having the students brainstorm on breather sequences, or sequences to break up the monotony of the continuous box morphing. I am hoping to film two of these sequences on Tuesday.

SOUND RECORDING
I also hope to start the sound recording on Tuesday. This I will have to refine a bit as I need to have very short phrases or statements from each child to go with each animation and as you can see, the animations flash by fast. I think I will have to have lengthen the time lingered on one of their object morphs to get the animation to match the voice length.

INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL
I am hoping that we can enter the completed animation into the International Student Media Festival. It would be really wonderful for these student to feel a part of a larger creative community. I have asked the festival for a deadline extension, so we will see if we can enter. The deadline is May 30th and we need a bit more time to complete it and ship out the DVD. I would really love for the kids to be aware of these festivals and check out other student created movies and animations from other parts of the United States and from around the world. The exciting thing is if their movie gets selected as a finalist, it will be screened at the festival.

I noticed that this above uploaded animation in Flash is kind of blurry and that my previous Windows Media player ones were clearer, but some people were having problems viewing the Windows Media Player so I am hoping that the Flash above is more universally viewable.

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: