Saturday, October 14, 2006

Instant Animation



In a few days I'll be 76. Someone asked me if I lived my life over again what would I do that I hadn't done. The answer was easy; I would save the world.

Of course Superman - who is roughly my age - wanted to do the same thing, but his approach is to take out all the bad guys, whereas my approach would be to teach everyone animation which, as a universal language, would help the bad guys and good guys get along better.

Teaching everyone to animate is not an easy task, but it will become easier with a program a friend directed me to yesterday at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df8wAla57PI

This is one of a new breed of programs like K-sketch which enables users to animate without having to learn animation. You can also use libraries of free animations such as: http://gifanimations.com/ and http://www.animationlibrary.com/

The idea of using art to unite the world is not entirely new either. UNESCO runs a number of programmes at Digiarts.

Some other sites can be found at Kids Art and Freebies

Stan

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Sound Effects


I once worked with a group of teenage truants. The teacher in charge told me that it was unlikely that many would turn up to my class, but in fact they nearly all turned up - much to the surprise and delight of the teacher.

Instead of trying to teach animation I started with the idea of making a soundtrack for a haunted house. I asked them if they could scream, groan, and work out some grisley sounds; they could and did, and loved it.

We never actually got around to making a movie for the track to go on, but did quite a bit of other noisy recordings, and in the process released a lot of pentup tension in the group.

With young children it's a good idea to start with animal sounds. You can find many sites with these, but a good one is http://www.davisfarmland.com/fun/funsound.htm

Of course, all children can make animal sounds, but it is interesting to know what sound they make.
Trying typing in Animal sounds + Africa and then change the country.
You will find how different the animal accents are around the world at:
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/

Another site at http://www.findsounds.com/types.html has a huge library covering just about anything you can think of. Acting out movements with the sound effects is good fun.
Another interesting site is http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/tagsViewSingle.php?id=181_3618

It is a good excercise to try and create your own sound effects with your voice, and things you can find in the class room. Shake, rattle, and roll things around; tap, drop, and scrape things. Then suggest how one can make sounds like the wind and rain.
UNESCO offers a free digital training kit at: http://unesco.uiah.fi/ydc-book/ which contains both audio files and an editor. Also http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/

Here are some other sites to get started on:

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Children's Art Therapy


I was nine when WW2 started, and remember laying in the Air raid shelter with my cousins, and crying "What have we done to them?", as the bombs fell. The 'We' being my cousins and me, as we felt that we were being personally targeted.
Such children's drawings as this one are typical of all wars as children try to make sense of a senseless world. But war is just one area where Art offers therapy.
This picture came from the site:
Art therapy is used for terminally ill children, and children suffering trauma from accidents, illness, loss of loved ones, and the like, but also the broad range of Special Needs children who are physically/mentally handicapped, or suffer from communication problems.
More can be found on:
Stan
stan@MakeMovies.co.uk

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

scribbling


I've just come across an interesting site at http://www.arts.ufl.edu/ART/RT_ROOM/teach/young_in_art/sequence/scribbling.html dealing with scribbling; the earliest stages of drawing.

I once worked with Special Needs children, and had a 14 year old boy who was brain damaged He had a mentality of a 3yr old, and his teacher dismissed him as unteachable, but I included him in the animation class.

I gave him a pile of paper and coloured crayons, and then asked him to scribble. The end result was a pile of scribbled paper in different colours which I shot as a sequence so they animated. He was delighted, and wanted to do more. Unfortunately I was not able to work with him again, but there is no doubt in my mind that scribbling would have helped him in some way.

Very young children will often scribble a meaningless mess, and when asked what it is, say Mummy, or Rover, or whatever comes to their mind. It is a big conceptual jump for children to associate a mark with person or object.
Another interesting site is at http://www.bartelart.com/arted/wallscribblers.html which deals with the therapeutic aspect of scribbling.

Not being an animator but needing to draw storyboards, I learnt to do quick sketches by scribbling on scrap paper very quickly to get the feel of the pencil. It's a bit like practising your scales until you can do it without thinking.
I've read somewhere that if you are right-handed, then scribbling or writing with your left hand will develope parts of the brain that other excercises haven't reached.

The drawing at the top was done by my daughter when she was three. She said it was 'A squirrel in its house at the top of a tree'.
She became quite a competent artist though suffering from dyslexia. It is interesting to note that it is common for Special Needs children to be better than average artists, yet this ability is rarely exploited.

On speaking to a teacher about dyslexia, she told me that it is common among criminals, and I am aware of it being common among truants as I've worked with children who have been dismissed from school for truancy.

Typically they were not able to keep up with other children when it came to reading and writing, and were not offered alternative ways to express themselves. Something as simple as scribbling might well offer one contribution to the problem.

Checkout: Scribbling

Stan

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Optical Toys

The easiest introduction to movie making for children is to use Optical toys. I normally start with rollers and flip books then move on to Zoetropes and Thaumatropes. The main thing with children is keeping them busy with projects they can do quickly and get results.

If you are not familiar with Optical Toys then good starting places are:
http://courses.ncssm.edu/GALLERY/collections/toys/opticaltoys.htm
and
http://www.precinemahistory.net/900.htm

A recent discovery of some mechanical parts from an unknown Ancient Greek machine has suggested they had some form of mechanical calculator. I have often wondered if they also started animation.

I have never seen any reference to it but Greek vases with figures on them in stages of a walk cycle animate perfectly; and movies have been made of this.
Bearing in mind that these vases are made on a potters wheel, it would not take much imagination to have a 'gate' operated by the wheel so that you saw the figure animate as with a Zoetrope.

One of the problems I had in running workshops in schools is that the Head Teachers would often wonder where 'Animation' fitted in. Some think of it as Art; some as Computer training, and some used it as 'end of week' leisure activity.
It is this 'identity problem' that is perhaps the biggest barrier to getting animation into schools as a core subject; Optical toys are a foot in the door.

Look at Optical Toys

Stan