Your Final Animations!

Congratulations on all your hard work this term. Here are your final Animations, they look great!

 

Whitefriars 1

 

Whitefriars 2

 

 

Hobbayne Bronze

 

 

Hobbayne Turquoise

 

 

Leopold 1

 

 

Leopold 2

 

 

Norbury

 

 

St. Johns

 

 

Trent

 

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Week 5: Puppets from Around the World

Here are some photos of puppets from around the world. Some fun facts about puppets: It’s national puppetry day on March 21st and the earliest puppet show was performed around 3,000 years ago!

 

Wayang Puppets (INDONESIA):

Wayang means “Shadow” in Javanese; Wayang puppets are popular shadow puppets used in performances in Indonesia. The first recorded performance in Indonesia was in 930 CE. Wayang puppets usually act out either religious stories, or stories from the “Ramayana,” an ancient epic Hindu poem written in India about 3,000 years ago.

 

Sicilian marionettes (ITALY):

Also known as the Opera dei Pupi (The Opera of the Puppets), puppet shows became immensely popular in Italy in the late middle ages. The handcrafted wooden marionettes often depicted historical events loosely; medieval knights and their battles were also favored performances. The puppet industry was dominated by several affluent and skilled craftsmen and their families.

 

Bunraku (JAPAN):

Bunraku is a traditional Japanese puppet style that involves chanting and complex mechanical puppets that have been around since 1684. Bunraku is notable for the sophisticated mechanical design of the heads of the puppets- their mouths, noses, eyes, eyebrows, and sometimes entire faces can be moved and changed. Each puppet requires three puppeteers to operate. Generally a single chanter will sit on a platform on the stage and recite all of the play’s text.

 

Mua Roi Nuoc (VIETNAM):

Emerging from the common occurrence of rice fields flooding, Mua Roi Nuoc is a Vietnamese form of puppetry that is performed in waist deep water. The rod puppets are built out of wood, then lacquered. Puppeteers manipulate a large rod that supports the puppet from under the water, and are generally hidden themselves behind a screen or other set piece. The illusion created is of a puppet moving by itself across the water. This tradition dates back to the 11th century.

 

Punch and Judy (GREAT BRITAIN):

Debuting in 1662, Punch and Judy are a married couple whose antics are performed in a series of short scenes that typically have a violent ‘punch’line. Punch and Judy are glove puppets, controlled by a single puppeteer from within a colorful booth. Punch and Judy performances involve a lot of improv- puppeteers add on to the storyline and embellish as they see fit. Though the tradition started in Great Britain, Punch and Judy performances have spread all over Europe.

Week 4: Shakespeare Animations

Here are a few Shakespeare Animations found on youtube. Maybe you could think about animating the plays you are studying!

Whiteboard Drawings The Tempest, Act I Scene 1 

 

 

Finger Puppet Shakespeare: The Tempest

 

 

Craft Video: The Tempest

 

 

This is a short summary of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” in form of a common craft video.

 

Anya explains Shakespeare’s famous play to two young girls, using flash animation. © 2003.

Some quotes from the children:
“Does everybody die?”
“That is just so awful! I mean, like, imagine running into your sword!”
“Are you sure you didn’t read this hard enough?”
“I like that play, but I liked Hamlet better.”

Watch it here!
Credits:
Commentators: Erin and Jenny Hayden, ages 11 and 7.
Creative Consultant: Nancy Sans
Animation: Anya Rose and Jim Hickcox
Writing, Narration, and Design: Anya Rose
Music: Verdi Requiem

Week 3: Ideas for Using Sound Effects and Foley in Your Animations

Ideas for Using Sound Effects and Foley in Your Animations

Foley is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to film, video, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality. These reproduced sounds can be anything from the swishing of clothing and footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass.

Foley can be lots of fun and it’s very creative when it comes to working out the best use of objects to form your perfect sound. Things you might not expect end up making great and effective sound effects.

Stabbing Sound – Knife and cabbage

Smashed head sound – hammer and watermelon

Footsteps re-recorded in the Studio

 

Here are a few ideas that you could use in the classroom:

– Scrunching thin paper for fire crackling.

– Blowing on thin paper for grass whistling in the wind.

– Pencils dropping on the floor for crash noises.

– Noises made from your mouth for all sorts of things, like rain or ticktocking of a clock.

Sounds could be performed live with animations or you can record your own sounds effects using the ZU3d app.

We hope it doesn’t get too noisy in your classroom!

 

 

 

 

 

Week 2: Ideas for using Projector, Collage and Animation

Ideas for using Projector, Collage and Animation

Caitlin G-B is Eastside’s Admin Intern, who after completing a degree in Fine Art started working at Camden Arts Centre assisting on their Education Programme. Her work last week related closely to this project so we asked her to share her experiences with you.

I assisted Artist Albert Patrony as he led a Family Drop In workshop in the Drawing Studio at Camden Arts Centre. Families made their own moving image films using collage. In this (slightly poor quality) video a live camera was connected to a projector and screened in the studio, which was a nice extra touch as everyone watched and applauded like a professional film screening.

You can check out more of Albert’s work here: http://www.albertpotrony.co.uk/

Workshop

Materials and Equipment Used:

• Variety of old Magazines (national geographic, fashion, art etc)
• Long rolls of tracing paper to be cut into long strips
• Long strip of black thick paper
• Projector
• Camera or ipad and cable to connect to projector.

As a starting point Albert took this quote from the Artist Ben Rivers, whose work is currently being shown in the galleries next door.

“Cinema is not the space of representation. It is not the space of documentation. It is a space of reconstruction”.

Ben Rivers

Families were asked to browse and select images from the magazines that interested them. Images were explored, deconstructed and reconfigured to make their own collaged narratives. In the classroom, you could ask children to pick out images that relate to topics or stories you are studying to bring your stories alive.

Long rolls of tracing paper were cut into sheets, acting as a scroll or a strip of a film, for families to lay out images and create their own narratives.

After everything was stuck on, the tracing paper was taken to the screening area where Albert had customised a decorator’s table with a simple rolling mechanism. A piece of black paper was arranged as a conveyor belt on top of the table (tracing paper on black paper creates a bold visual effect). A camera on a tripod was set on a fixed point filming a section of the paper roll (camera lense was faced down on the paper). The camera was live-fed to a projection on opposite wall of the drawing studio whilst the child wound their film through the camera’s frame using the device (ipads can connect to projectors with a correct cable).

In the classroom, and if without tripod, you could get the children to move the camera freely from left to right, reading their collaged film. This would also give children control to focus in on certain parts of their stories, e.g. keeping the camera filming for longer on certain images of their collages. Torches and acetate can be used as props to create and develop visual effects, e.g. flashing torches for a storm effect.

Week 1: Glossary

Eastside has hit the ground running this term with both Trent and St John’s of Walham Green starting their Animated Readers sessions this week.

If you fancy having a go at animation before your session starts you can follow these simple steps- http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zcqnfg8

So you can talk with confidence to both your pupils, colleagues, friends and artists, we have put together a glossary of top animation terms!

2D animation

Flat animation, so drawing or computer graphics- this can be known as CGI

3D animation

Strictly speaking this is animation where you have to put the 3D glasses on, however, it more commonly means computer animation which imitates a real 3D world or using 3D models.

Pixilation

A technique used in film whereby the movements of real people are filmed or edited in such a way that they appear to move like artificial animations.
Pixilation is stop motion animation using people instead of puppets. So instead of making an armature and photographing that, you photograph a person doing small incremental movements. The result is a surreal look at our real world. The laws of physics and the real world no longer apply since we’re using animation, but since our environment and characters are real places it puts a unique twist on film making.

Flipbook animation

In its most primitive form, a flipbook is an actual book, and each page is a static image. The reader flips through all of the pages at an even pace, resulting in a short animated movie. A quick and easy way to illustrate to your students the power of tricking the eyes! 

Stop motion

Stop motion is an animation technique that physically manipulates an object that appears to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Clay and jointed dolls/ puppets are most commonly used, but it works with all sorts of arts materials and even everyday objects with some googly eyes!!

Animated Readers

Characters in books are alive in our imagination. We construct our own new worlds and characters that are vivid and exciting. This term we are inviting your students to bring the worlds alive through animation.

Animation is a fantastic way to combine your students reading comprehension, imagination, ICT and arts skills. With a whole range of animation techniques available, our animators will work with one appropriate to your class text or topic and the equipment in school, to support your students in creating the world of their stories.

Animations come in all different forms and all are exciting and extremely satisfying to make. To get your class in the mood why not show them these two videos-

 

 

 

If you wish to share the over arching structure for this term with your colleagues or keep them for your own reference, please click on this link to download them- Verse vs Verse Structure Autumn 15

 

 

Doorways to wonder

11% of children aged 8-16 say they do not enjoy reading at all! Through creative and active workshops, our drama facilitators will be bringing texts to life and help students delve into their imaginations and expand their creative responses. We know that using drama in literacy classes can help students contextualise the story in their own experiences, understand their emotions and feelings and embed their reading in their own values, which helps with retention and better comprehension (Booth 1985). Over three years we will not only see an improvement in reading attainment, but hopefully a growth in the enthusiasm for and enjoyment of reading. All those participating will have the chance to respond to a range of reading materials and will be encouraged to bring in stories or books from home to motivate reading both at school and home. Verse vs. Verse is not about the mechanics of reading and writing, but rather about helping children to access the magic found in books. We know that discovering this magic will help the children we are working with to unlock their potential and achieve more in their academic studies. Indeed as the Cultural Learning Alliance reported in 2011 “taking part in drama and library activities improves attainment in literacy. Schools that integrate arts across the curriculum in the US have shown consistently higher average reading and mathematics scores compared to similar schools that do not. Participation in structured arts activities increases cognitive abilities”.