Claymation Day Six, breather sequences and sound

Yesterday was the sixth day of the animation workshop at Horace Cureton Elementary. The children filmed three breather sequences which I inserted in between sections of their animation. They did a fantastic job! It was nice to see them use a concept from the Sony Bravia Bunnies video as I think actually trying these cube movements gave them a better understanding of how time consuming and precise that particular stop motion animation was

This animation workshop series is the first time these 29 4th/5th grade students have created a stop motion animation. We have not completed the animation yet, but the results so far are beyond what I had expected. There is a combination of planned organization and free form creativity that is required of each child. I like conducting these animation workshops as they require each child to exercise a blend of different skill sets. Most importantly, it is a project that is impossible without teamwork.







































TEST ANIMATION WITHOUT SOUND:


Above is the animation so far with all the stop motion parts inserted. It needs to be tweaking it a bit. The pacing will be adjusted (credit screens will linger longer). I also need to add a few credit screens to give credit to the Alum Rock Education Foundation for the mini grant, the egg company for the egg carts and a few other people who have made making this animation workshop possible. I also want to add a few process screens at the end showing the kids at work making the animation. These kind of images at the end of animations are always fun...kind of a peek behind the magic.

What remains is the voice recording and the music. I hope I can get this completed in the next week. I estimate that the final run time will be five minutes as I will need to lengthen each animation sequence to match the voice for each child. I also might break up the animation sequences a bit more. I placed the third breather at the very end, but I think I need to divide up the animations a bit more. I'll be experimenting with that.

VOICE RECORDING
We also started recording their voices yesterday. This was an interesting challenge as the air conditioner would turn on and off frequently and was very, very loud. Also, an elementary classroom is no sound stage...you just cannot expect kids to be totally silent as they needed to be working on other assignments as I recorded their voices one by one.
I hope the ambient noise will filter out OK. I borrowed a pop filter from a friend and that will hopefully help at least with the voices a bit.

MUSIC
A guitar ensemble group of elementary and junior high school students will be recording the music...an original composition titled "Marching Ants." More on that in another posting.

Got up at 5:00am to complete this animation build here.. Kind of can't see it clearly anymore and need to work on other projects now.

Claymation Day Five

Yesterday we filmed the last of the children's animation sequences. Here are some still images from the sequences from yesterday. I will be editing out the post behind the flower in this animation sequence below. The post was used in a few other sequences where it will have to be removed.













































































































































































We had a second stage set up again. This was very helpful. We used two thick sheets of foam core boards. A light from Ikea and a borrowed light from De Anza College's Euphrat Museum's Arts in The Schools Program. Second camera and camera stand also borrow, although I have order a second camera of my own that should be here by Friday.



















SOUND RECORDING
We will begin sound recording on Friday. I was supposed to go in today but my son has a headache and is feeling sick so this recording will be done on Friday.

BREATHER SEQUENCES
We will be using colored cubes of different colored sides to create the breather sequences. The cubes will move across the stage and turn on their sides. I hope to film three of these sequences to break up the animation into sections. Two sequences would be fine, too. The children will have fun with this as instead of one animator there will be 9 or ten kids moving cubes around the stage at any one time. It will be fun and crazy.


















Part of the first stage folded up and ready to take back to my studio. This also can double as a shadow puppet stage. For this set up we draped a black cloth over the back and had a patterned floor for the stage. The blue painters tape was useful to hold a lot of things in place: cables, camera tripods, lights, stage parts...etc.

Third Water Tapestry for San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles

I have completed the wire form base for the third water tapestry.























Detail























Interesting nylon fabric donated by Walker Bags of San Francisco.























The first two wire form banners stacked together hanging on a stand. The visitor created diatoms will attach and complete these banners. I will also be creating a large diatom element for each as the focal point. Several diatoms will illuminate on each banner with led lights.

Butoh Dance Costume

I am working on the third tapestry for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and in the process am also working on a large diatom element that will remove from the tapestry and be worn as a hat by dancer, Christina Braun. Above are images of the wire form in process of being built.



















Above is the hat form being built on a trash can lid. Below: Preliminary sketch. I had originally thought of doing a sort of floral diatom shaped hat, but it looked, well, too floral. After looking at a lot of diatoms, I decided to make it round and base it on a Japanese rain hat. Instead of one diatom design on the hat, I have arranged various diatom shapes in a radial format around the hat form. I will be placing led lights behind the forms. I will be weaving plastic bags to create the solid diatom areas.

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.

Refining the Visitor Activity of The Quilt Museum's Sub Zero Project

I have spent a few hours refining what will be the visitor component of the San Jose Museum of Quilt and Textile project for the Sub Zero Festival on June 5th.
The visitors will have a choice of creating diatoms from plastic bottle bottoms or weaving a diatom from plastic bag yarn.

I have chosen the imagery of diatoms because these bloom in our creeks when they are clogged with plastic bags, bottles and all the other garbage that have led our Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek to be declared "Impaired".

I have already prepped all the plastic bottles collected from the Rotary Club clean up at Guadalupe river and collected from a Walk-a-Thon from Stevens Creek Elementary. All that remains is to hole punch these so that they can be tied down to the banners after the visitor has decorated them.

The plastic bags are being collected at Lynnbrook High School in Cupertino and at Horace Cureton in Alum Rock.

Below: Plastic bottle diatom samples.These are created by cutting off the bottoms of plastic bottles and then decorating them with permanent magic markers.








































Below: Diatoms woven samples. Made from pipe cleaners, floral wire and plastic bag yarn and produce netting.

Art Opening at Bill Gould Art and Architecture

My friend Charlotte Kruk was part of a group show art opening at Bill Gould Art and Architecture on Thursday night and it was really a blast. Wonderful music and food (well, I got there too late for the food) and all the art was really interesting. The works will be up for six months.
Below: Charlotte's wearable art made of food wrappers


























Below: Several of Charlotte's dresses dramatically hung. I have never seen them hung this way and really liked seeing them floating like this.































































A few of Charlotte's dress form sculptures.













































Below: Charlotte at the opening and Charlotte with photographer friend, David.


















































Some works in progress on display on in the shop area of Bill Gould Studio