November Residency Week posted by lorraine

Mr Barbers class

Animation
7th & 10th November

We began the session by discussing what animation was , how it works and the origin of words relating to animation.

The group learned about ‘persistence of vision’, and played with examples of thaumatropes (wonder turners) a Victorian optical toy that merges two images together when spun. They then designed and made their own thaumatropes.


We next looked at creating the illusion of movement using two images, Pauline and Tracey were supporting me in this session and we were able to relate this activity to some of the terms they had used in their dance sessions – side to side – up and down – high and low. The group made roller animations of a character performing an action or changing an emotion – jumping – waving – skipping – calm/scared – happy/sad etc.







Sequences

In the afternoon we began to work with sequences of images. We discussed how all moving images are made up of a number of changing still images and unrolled a reel of film to show how many pictures it takes to make up just 60 seconds of film.

The group played with examples of flipbooks, then took them apart and shuffled them to see if they could put them back in the correct order by carefully examining the differences in each image. The group then made their own flipbooks – again looking at different types of movement that they had covered in dance sessions – high/low – big/small – near/far – side to side – changing shape. To create a sequence of Images that animated when the book was flicked through. The character animations created in this session were scanned and I compiled the animations into a single movie, the class have been working with Kate and Matt to compose music for each of their characters.

Pixilation ("affected by the pixies" 1848, from pixy-led: bewitched)

Pixilation is a technique where real actors are used in an animated film By repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame the actor becomes a kind of living stop motion puppet.

In this session the group tried their hand at some camera based animation techniques. We began by looking at some Pixilation and stop frame movies and discussed how they were made.

Working in the hall Pauline directed small groups in choreographed movements and by taking a series of still images we produced animations of them flying, travelling and spinning. We also
created a magical growing tree based on the ‘thousand arm goddess’ illusion.










Smaller groups worked with Tracy on stop frame animations using objects to animate the different letters of ‘jabberwocky’ being magically formed. We also created some of the letters using body forms and pixilated movement. The group will also be working with Kate to compose a soundtrack for these animations.

12th December
Growing and Changing

The aim of this session was to introduce a technique that the class could use to produce animations for the final performance, and continue to work on in their own time.

We thought it would be nice to make something that could be projected onto the jabberwocky and as Mr. Barber had been doing some work on the life cycle of plants we continued this into image sequences of something growing and changing.

We talked about movement and sequences, adding interest – would it grow straight up or bend as it moves – would it grow slowly or quickly – how smaller changes make the animation appear slower and larger changes/fewer frames make it appear faster. We looked at silhouettes and discussed how you can tell what something is – how would you tell the difference between an orange and a tennis ball for example.

Working in pairs they designed a fruit or a flower that might grow in the Tulgey wood – this could be a real fruit/flower or one from their imagination that they would give a name, and they designed the seed from which it would grow.



Using storyboards, they planned what sequence of images would be needed to animate from the seed to the final fruit/flower.


They re-created these drawings on coloured paper and cut each one out to create a silhouette sequence of their growing fruit/flower.