Animation Station- day 1

We kicked off to a great start with day one of the Animation Station, led by artist and Illustrator Amy Pennington, supported by artist Veena Scialo,  a recent animation graduate and another student of illustration and animation. Our very well qualified team began this chilly day with a warm up in the gym!

Amy then talked us through some of her own illustration and animation work to inspire us.

She also showed us some animations that she made with other groups of children.

We then warmed up our fingers by making some small flick book animations to illustrate the process of making static actions move.

We then learnt how to storyboard a sequence for an animation using a series of images and notes, using a selection of small toys.

Children made some lovely speedy drawings to tell funny, scary and dramatic stories.

After talking us through how to use i-motion – a simple, free animation app – we got to work making our first film.

It was a team effort, someone behind the camera, someone directing and another moving the characters, we all pitched in making props, speech bubbles and titles as they were needed.

Amy circulated, giving advice as she went.

Just before lunch we had a mini screening of our first attempts and offered each other advice on what went well and what we could improve.

After our lunch break we got to work designing and making our own characters – one each. We made a drawing then modelled using plasticine – so therapeutic. It was very calm in the room in contrast to the high energy animating sessions!

Children used their drawings carefully to model their developing characters.

We worked in our groups once more to storyboard our new characters into a new adventure. We used a few different techniques for this.

It didn’t matter if the drawings were sketchy at this stage, as long as it helped our ideas develop.

We used speech bubbles to help our characters talk 

and developed complex props as they were needed.

We used the iPads again to start filming.

The stories began to get quite complex – we were very busy!

We worked as excellent teams

We were having so much fun! We look forward to trying out some new techniques tomorrow and to working with some full body animation!

For work made on day 2 of the Animation Station click HERE!