Yet more last clips

Derek Novosad created this piece with sand and photos. He played it in class with the Sex Pistols.

This is also some sand animation, this time from Erik Sirke. He showed it to me last week but I didn't have space on my thumb drive to take it home at that time.


Sand got very popular in the last week. Here is some tests by Colten Yuzicapi.

A few last tests

Here is Erik Sirke's take on the "battle donkey" idea from earlier in the term. He didn't have sound effects suitable for it on hand so I told him I would add them for him, but I didn't.

Geremy tried out sand animation. He makes it more effective by manipulating it in editing, creating a sense of frustration.

Geremy also tried his hand at the Light Bright (tm).

Thomas Retzlaff created this flicker work:

Thomas also created this test using Adobe After Effects combined with pixelation.

Colten's tests

Here are a few more tests. These are from Colten Yuzicapi. He handed them in on dvd, which I can usually crack and post without trouble, but for some reason his discs gave me a lot of trouble and I needed to take a very roundabout method to copy them and then encode them for the web.

End of term but not end of work

Here are a number of tests that Jacob and Ashley have been doing with the 3D software.

This is the 16mm footage created by Yvonne, Geremy, Stephen, and Eric. I hand processed it this morning. The triangle shape is my error from loading the bolex when it's wind was run out. It is the shutter out of sync. The first clip is the film as we see it, reversal colour processed as negative. I reversed in the computer so you can see what it should look like. There were other problems with the mounting of the motor that prevented the camera from backwinding and thus there are not as many tricks as they intended.

Janine's class

Janine Windolph took over the previous class and had everyone collaborate on a workshop creating and animating some characters and situations. Here are some tests to try to figure out water on a shore.

Here is a lip sync test we made, using one of the faces made in class.

Kristine Dowler made this dinosaur piece with toys, plants, etc with a bit of computer graphics/animation mixed in. Some good sound as well.

Ashley Green worked with sand, at first bottom lit and then top lit.

Deric created this using various mediums.

third last class

Janine Windolph made this piece on After Effects using a mosquito image she asked her uncle to draw for her. It fit well into todays class which began with an optical printing demo.

Kristine Dawler created this last week and we shot it in class today because we ran out of time last week. I was surprised that someone who could freehand draw such a nice chicken over and over again would opt to do a flipbook of an egg (the image is a transparency traced from her flipbook).

Yvonne Abusow made this clock piece from cut outs.


The following is based (loosely) on the Harryhousen style of shooting the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts where one image is projected behind on a small rear screen and the puppet is animated in sync with it in the foreground. The figure was made by Yvonne and Geremy (I think) and was animated by Erik and was inspired by David Bowie.

week 9 tests

All of today's videos, except the third one, are silent.

This is a beat poet platypus that Margaret Bessai designed for me a number of years ago. The tail is connected to one leg and the two arms are connected together. This is just a test shot in class.

Nathan Ottenson and Geremy Logue created this sand animation in class on a lightbox I built last year which is powered by LED lights, making it a bit dim. It is upside down, sorry. Meant to flip it but am now in a rush to post these.

This is something Geremy Logue did using the animation function on Photoshop. I've never tried this. The old version we had in the classroom didn't do it the same way, so we didn't get to demo it. He was limited by how many frames he could do, this is the maximum length of one session.


This is an in-class test we did using a stick figure I traced from a Muybridge sequence, mixed with Steve Macauley's performance.


This is another similar work using an overhead projector, but this time using the original Muybridge images of a woman, with Eric Sirke performing.


Everyone drew flip books in class and some people traced the flipbooks onto transparencies so we could project them. Here is Thomas Retzlaff's.

March 5 words

Noun: Time
Verb: Erase

Here is a Lego animation Nathan Ottenson did, even though he regretfully missed Lego day. He had some difficulty tracking the moon in the background window.

Nathan also brought in this animation he has been working on using flipnotes on his DS handheld game.

Here is Colton's collage animation test --- or perhaps not. Couldn't seem to encode it for the web.

But here is a few frames, looped, that I shot in class during a discussion of replacement animation while we watched some old George Pal animation with wooden figures. This is just made from three pieces of clay.

New words

Noun: Headgear
Verb: Ghostwriting

The following video was pointed out as interesting: check out the Coldplay video at this site.

a 'late' possum animation

Yvonne Abusow's possum animation.
I guess it's not the possum that is late but the elephant.

Battle Donkey, final

More Battle Donkey

I've been having a difficult time uploading these and, as you have likely discovered, they often don't run. I'm not sure why as I've used different encoders and have reloaded them. I'll probably change systems for getting these videos uploaded.

Battle Donkey

Rotoscoping

We did a few rotoscoping tests in class today. This is a few frames from the opening scene of Orson Wells' "Touch of Evil". We call the clip "Taste of Evil". It is drawn by Nathan Ottenson, even though he was in pain from an ingrown toenail (good luck with that).

Rotoscoping and words of week

Words for this week:
Noun: Rope
Verb: Jump

Here are some guidelines for helping get started rotoscoping using Flash.

Rotoscope with Flash

This is a bit of practice trying to figure out how to rotoscope using Flash. It is combined with After Effects. Background is my snail.

Lego animation

We animated Lego this week in class. I finally fixed up my mini-cyclorama (about 2 feet wide) that basically features a curved wooden panel, painted green, sprayed down with dulling compound to reduce hot-spots. I threw in some random background into the tests. The first one is by Geremy with help from others. Watch for the Battle Donkey. There is no sound.

William had the day off of school and really wanted to help out so I brought him in as my (unpaid) guest workshop leader. He brought mainly mixed pieces but also his helicopter.


We also brought in some Bionicles. They are great to animate. Here is a piece that Janine and Kristine did.

words for week 4

Words for this week are
Verb: Battle
Noun: Donkey

Possum Assassin animation

Here are the animation tests from this week's possum words with attention on computer applications. First is Jacob Zacharias with a piece made on his DS game.

Janine Windolph, a graduate student in Interdisciplinary studies, is shadowing the course and doing some of the exercises. Her response is also above.


This is Kristine Dowler's work using cut-outs, a digital still camera, and an assassin playing possum. She made interesting use of shadow from the paper and light.

Gravity

Here is the other test we did in class last week. It is shot with a still camera which is attached to the lighting grid in the studio, pointing straight down, allowing the body to seemingly defy gravity.

four guys dancing

Here is another piece we shot in class that I call "Four Guys Dancing". If uses a mixture of pixilated humans and paper artwork, replaces and exchanged each frame.

Flying in the studio

Inspired by the famous sequence from Norman McLaren's "Neighbors", I had my students exercise their legs for a while in class this week. I am not sure why my resolution is low but it was either from the capture settings or the export settings. I will review it and get better results in the future.

week 3 words

Words for this week are:
Verb: Spin
Noun: Doctor

Fish Dream animation

Based on the week's theme of "fish"and "dreams",
here is Erik Sirke's animation (silent):

and here is Thomas Retzlaff's (silent):

and here is Yvonne Abusow's (sound):

and Geremy Lague's (silent):

and Stephen Macauley's (silent):

and Derek Novosad's (silent):

week two words

Week two words, working with computer animation, are:
(o)possum
assasinate

Week One themes

In our first week we are working in various destructive styles of animation, creating work that forces you to erase or destroy the previous image to create the next one.

Thematic words to use in this exercise are:

NOUN: "Fish"
VERB: "Dreams"