Meeting at 9:00 a.m in the Animation office/seminar space. Room i02.
As a starting point for getting to know you all, we would like you to select a favourite piece from your current art folio to take in for a friendly and informal show and tell together. Don’t panic! - You won’t be expected to talk at great length. Try to find a piece in your folio that you feel best expresses your current creative interests, a piece that you feel pleased with, and hopefully provokes your own interest to talk about it further. It can be a still image or moving image, we will also have a monitor and pc set up so if you have a link to online work you can screen this from there.
Some suggested questions to think about when looking at your own work could be; what you learned in creating it? Did it open up potential to you for future ideas? Why do you like it? Does it relate to other work and artist you admire? Are there things you don’t like about it – or would do differently? Artists usually always have something we would do differently – and not a bad thing at all, especially in the beginning stages of learning new processes, it’s how you progress, and we heartily encourage this way of reflection all throughout your time of the course.
Following this we will then take a look at the very starting point of making images move, and looking at work created with a ZOETROPE.
Zoetrope Task Outline:
You will be given a blank zoetrope sheet to complete. This short drawn exercise will introduce you to moving image helping you understand how long or short a second is and how much information the eye can take in during that second, and how the Persistence of Vision works in action. In week 2 we can film these through on the line testers but do feel free to test your work on the zoetrope as you go.
Remember that a zoetrope sequence is played on a loop so your sequence will start and end on almost the same picture. When played continuously it should be impossible to spot the beginning or the end. You will have fifteen boxes to fill which will last just over a second (the most common frame rate used by animators is 12 images per second).
Points to Consider:
The challenge of this project is in its simplicity and the restrictions of working in a short loop. Don’t over complicate your images. Backgrounds are not necessary but instead concentrate on the moving image. Choose repetitive themes that can play continuously. There are different approaches to filling your boxes…
Abstract: These work well and can take on many different forms from soft marks to hard lines.
Infinite: For example zooming into an image then passing through the image, managing to link the end of the loop the original drawing again.
Left to Right: make your image pass by the screen by moving it within the boxes left to right.
Character: simple drawn sequence such as a character waving.
Action Points for research!
Persistence of Vision
Eadweard Muybridge.
Other optical toys – for example phonotropes, praxinoscope, cakeatropes... check this collection on Vimeo curated by our animation graduate Jim LeFevre https://vimeo.com/channels/phonotropetmjlefevre
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