Animation with gang members in Bristol

At last this project has started and it's going very well.  We have two interviews with recent victims of gang related crime and two interviews with local community police officers. 

The young people involved have had a day of animation with me, making models, thinking up a short scenario and working with a green screen, the results can be seen here. This was to give them an idea of the process and principles of animation as well as introduce them to the ideas of the project. They all did brilliantly and so far no one has got uncomfortable with the theme of understanding the emotions and feelings of others when they've become a victim of crime often within their own home.

The five young people involved listened to the interviews last week, there was a surprisingly quiet moment of reflection for the small group as they listened to the lady talk about her house and car being targeted by a small gang of youths. She sounds like a lovely lady!

So the group decided that as she was talking about her home and feeling like a prisoner in it, while the gang targeted her, she should be a tortoise! Pictured below.

Another small group decided the community police officers being interviewed should be penguins again pictured below. 

Next week we will start to film the characters, animating to the words of the interviews.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

An animated Christmas card

Have a great Christmas and a happy, healthy new year!

These short animations were made by year 10 ICT students at the Baxter College in Kidderminster. Their brief to create a short animated Christmas greeting that can be used on Youtube, sent via email or posted on a blog entry. The idea of the animation day was to introduce all 40 students to the software, principles and possibilities of animation within GCSE ICT. Next term they're planning a lot more animation as part of the course work.

Enjoy!

Adapting and animating

Keeping ideas short and simple is a good starting point for any animation project, if the class have a familiar theme, story or idea it will keep everyone involved focused, which will influence the final outcomes in a positive way. The random, "lets make it up as we go", approach, will be good fun but the final product/outcome won't be as good.

So adapting a story the class/group are familiar with is a very good idea.

I did a project with year fours last year adapting and animating the Twits!

The class had to decide on which scenes should be included in their animated adaptation, as not all the scenes would be possible or easy to film.

The clip below is a good example of a simple scene from the Twits, Mrs Twit adding worms to Mr Twit's Spaghetti. A simple fun visual scene. This clip has no sound, so make sure you set aside time for the sound, voices etc.



I like the look of this competition being organised by Film Street.

Film Street, the award winning filmmaking website for children, has just launched an animation competition for children and schools, Animate IT ’09: To cut a long story short.

In partnership with Kudlian Software, the Picture Production Company and the National Year of Reading we are inviting children under 12, primary schools and after school groups to make an animated trailer to promote their favourite book; our patron is CBBC’s Ed Petrie.

You have until April to enter your work and there are prizes!

Advanced animation ideas

Here are the outcomes from the advanced animation course for teachers held at the Institute of Education on 5th December.

The day long course was intended for teachers who have been using animation in the classroom and wanted to discover new ideas and practice they can use with their students.

So the day included the following:

1-Chroma Keying with I can animate and a green screen.

2-The use of different shots, long shots, mid shots and close ups.

3-Reaction to action. This really brings characters to life!

4-Pausing the action and creating beats within the animation, links to the above point.

5-Using multiple sound effects and music to give added depth to the animations, animation is 60% sound.

6- And finally creating much simpler story ideas, reducing the ideas down to a raw essence, keeping it painfully simple. Simple doesn't mean boring and unimaginative.

So there was quite a lot to do in one day! The participants worked in small groups of four and each group came up with a fun simple idea. Only one group could do the chroma keying as I only have one green screen. The green screen cloth was sourced from Kudlian Soft.

In the past I have worked with students using a large piece of green paper from the art department which provided a perfect key. (Traditionally green and blue screens are used in the film industry because there are no blue or green hues/colours in our skin tones.)

Remember when making your models don't include any green modeling clay if you're using a green screen.

The key to a successful chroma key is light, an even spread of light on your green/blue screen.

The chroma key in the animation below isn't great because of the poor light, also I think using a video camera will generate better results, both films were shot with webcams.



I like the sound effects in the Christmas surprise and the reaction to action by both the Christmas tree and the bird. The sound effects were sourced from www.findsounds.com

Animation project with gang members- Part 1

This project is still in the planning stages and is going to be one of the most challenging I've ever done, but also exciting and potentially very rewarding.

A creative form of crime related reconciliation.

Working with a CLC in Bristol, local community police, three secondary schools and hopefully some of the amazing talent in the animation industry in Bristol , we are going to give young gang members the opportunity to confront the effects of their gang related crime; muggings, beatings, knife attacks. theft and general intimidation.

The first stage will be introducing the young people (aged 13-16) to the principles of animation through a hands on workshop. 

Then they will devise, with our help a series questions that we will put to victims of gang related crime. This will happen in a different location without the young people.

The interviews, thoughts and feelings of the victims will be recorded with a voice recorder, then edited down to 60-90 seconds.

These interviews will from the skeleton to the animation shorts that the young people will then create. Similar to Creature Comforts, where interviews form the structure and inspiration to the models, set and finished film.

The young people will then study the interview edits and create models, sets and an animated short in small groups of three based on the interviews.

This project will have many different outcomes;

1- The animation shorts, which we will aim to use in other schools, screen at festivals host on Youtube.

and

2- ?  

It's hard at this point to say what the other outcomes will be, I know what I and every one else involved would like them to be.

So over the next 5/6 months I'll blog the process, progress and outcomes.

Sharp-Shotz animation competition

A great opportunity for any budding young animators, Sharp-Shotz is in it's second year and is organised by Aardman Animations and UWE. 

The themes for the competition are drugs, knives and guns! With the aim of delivering awareness messages. 

For years I've been telling students not to include knives, guns, chain saws, rocket launchers and other items of death and destruction in their animation films, as the finished outcomes are always a bloody mess and resorting to violence isn't very creative and imaginative. Now I have until December 22nd 2008 to give students a legitimate opportunity to include weapons in their films, they will love it! 

Animation, specially stop motion animation with plasticine is the perfect medium for allowing young students to explore these ugly issues. No one gets hurt and plasticine models bleed well! Animation and violence go hand in hand, and kids love it!

To find out more about Sharp-Shotz CLICK HERE

Below is a film made in the summer by students from the Bewdley school. The idea behind the film was about a guy with a knife reacting to quickly and without thinking assumes the worst.