Animusic

My father-in-law told me to look up some neat videos he saw on PBS, and I'm glad I found them. These videos are fascinating, and the music is pretty awesome, too! I'm showing Animusic 2 to my middle-schoolers today, and they are actually sitting here watching it, bodies and mouths completely still, in awe!

It's really neat how computer animation allows people to "build" machines like this that you could probably never build in real life... and then do something with them. This one reminds me of the ball sculpture at the Clay Center on steroids.

Rotoscoping

I am such a spoiled art teacher.

Art is expensive, and nobody's going to argue that fact. And there are so many art media to try, it can really begin to get expensive to have an art program if you want to give kids a well-rounded art with experiences in a lot of different materials. My program is pretty expensive to have in a school because I think kids need to experience everything from traditional media (paints, pastels, etc...) to modern art media (film, animation, photography) and that can really add up.

So, imagine my surprise when I asked for 5 licensed copies of Photoshop CS3... and actually got it! Not that my school doesn't supply me with the things I need for my program, but because they supply pretty much everything I ask for and this program costs about $600 straight off the shelf.

Now that I have it, I have to learn how to use it. Luckily, my friend David from Carrot Revolution pointed me toward a really neat collaborative video project he's starting -- Rotoball. The project involves rotoscoping, which is basically like tracing over video and then discarding the video layer so all that remains is the drawing. (Find out more about rotoscoping here.) So far today, I've been messing around with the program and came up with this:

I cheated and used filters instead of drawing on a seperate layer, but you get the idea. I got the general idea of how it works, so now I'm going to try rotoscoping in earnest. :)

Fan: A Love Story

by Lori Samsel

Another artistic animation found while surfing around on Youtube. This one all my WV friends should be able to relate to, because it's been HOT around here! Apparently, the girl in the video is hot, too, and she is looking for ways to cool off. I love the simplistic, curvy line drawings reminiscent of Andy Warhol's early blotted line drawings (the shoes!) I also like the metaphors that are represented in thought bubbles. Very clever! I am definitely going to share this with my students when we start our own animation projects.

Guernica

How many works of art can you identify in this film short?

This is a very interesting animated clip from Vancouver Film School, starring a character from the painting "Guernica."