Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

If you work in an Animation Studio, there is a reasonable chance that you will eventually be transcribed to an animated character. Producer/Director Bob Godfrey would take it even further and name characters after you as well as imitating your voice when he did the voice-overs. It's more of an in-house joke than a quick way to becoming a Star, but that might all be changed.

For many years there have been children's book publishers who will insert your childs name in fairy tales, and run off a special copy for you. At least one took it further and would put your childs head on the illustrations in the book, but now Smart software can actually put a childs face on a character in an animated movie, and (I understand) do it inter-actively. You can read all about it at http://www.dexigner.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5777

And talking of stars - this time the real thing - a common animation job is making stars twinkle. It is now done by computer, but used to be done by having a piece of black paper covered in pinholes as a background, and another piece also covered in pinholes moving across it; quite a lengthy job for such a minor effect.

There are some people who do not like twinkly stars (cries of shame). They are astronomers who are using lasers, optics, and some single-frame techniques to stopping them twinkle so they don't have to 'wonder what they are' any more.

You can find out why at http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/061105_mfe_December_06_Laser_Beams.html

In the same article there is mention of a scientist who has discovered a whole new field of movies; taking pictures of your breath. It seems that our breath is an indicator of our health - which sound pretty reasonable to me - but taking pictures of it??? Yes, by using a laser to pick out the chemical content of your exhalations.

It may be the next step up from a Breathalyser test for drunken driving; how soon before the breathalyser shows up as a movie saying 'You're drunk, your ill, and your fined'. That would put a twinkle in the eyes of the Traffic cops.

Stan

Writing for Animation

By chance today I see that Microsoft has just taken out a patent on software to help "children write stories". I wondered if Microsoft are trying to put me out of business! But on checking their patent, it seems to be related to manipulating images- so that's OK.

The easiest way to get children to start writing is to let them write 'All About Me', covering what their favourite food, sport, lessons, etc, are, and what they dislike most. Of course, Social Networking and Blogs are just that in a more elaborate form.

Writing about oneself is a great therapy - as is talking about oneself. And part of that therapy is due to the fact that someone is actually interested in us. But of course, not everyone who is interested in us has the same motives.
There are lots of online questionnaires asking us details of our buying habits and social activities so they can draw up a 'Profile' for marketing; that's innocent enough, and we all know what it is about.

But supposing these marketing profiles and our networking/blog profiles were matched up, it would give a fairly accurate picture of who we are and what we look like. Well, the 'Big Brother' idea has been done to death, but I'm thinking in terms of creating characters for stories.

Would it ever be possible to feed a computer a profile of someone based on their Blog/Network profile, and buying habits, and get a reasonably accurate image of the person?
I for one, wouldn't say it couldn't be done. I shall be keeping a beady eye out for more Microsoft patents.

Stan

Save the World

Hardly had the ink dried on my laser printer from yesterdays post about computers recognising movement when I came across and article about a computer that does just that. Check it out at http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10387-surveillance-system-spots-violent-behaviour.html
It seems it can distinguish between friendly and hostile behaviour. Put one of these on a robot and let it roam the streets and we will live in a peaceful, though somewhat inhibited society.

Of course, the world has other problems apart from our trying to destroy each other. In our spare time we also try to destroy the world; but not any more, the people at GlobalSchoolNet are looking for ideas to prevent global warming. You can find their site at http://www.google.com/educators/globalwarming.html
The idea is to get children and young people around the world to submit ideas and work together collaborating on movies and projects to get it sorted.

Once crime and global warming have been solved there are quite a few other problems to keep us busy. You can find some of them at Save the World

Stan

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:

Animal sounds
Machine sounds
Weather sounds
Instrument sounds


Stan

stan@makemovies.co.uk

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:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5223.shtml


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:

Art Therapy and Special Needs


Stan

stan@MakeMovies.co.uk

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

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

Drawing Age

Did you know that most of us reach our 'Drawing age' at around 10 years old? That is, unless we have a talent for drawing or intend using it in our hobbies or work, we don't improve much after that age.
You might like to look at some drawings in http://www.tiddles.co.uk/ a site for 'Badly drawn cats'.
Cats seem to be the most drawn animal, and the one most featured in comics, animation, and children's stories.

This is my effort. I can draw a bit better than this, but while showing children how to make faces using letters and numbers, I discovered that I could draw Henry's Cat (www.henryscat.com) using the letters from the word Miow. It then became my starting point for lessons.

Psychologists are very interested in children's drawings; teachers rarely are, but they could learn a lot if they had the training to do so.
One site that offers this is http://ericae.net/eac/eac0103.htm which outlines the
'Goodenough Harris Draw A Man' test.

There are a number of sites with such tests.
Another good one is http://www.architecture-mind.com/childrens%20drawings%20kellog.html
which shows children's pictures of houses.

There has been much concern about children's literacy. My generation (born 1930) had only reading as a hobby. Not even radio as the ones we had operated on accumulators which lasted a few hours at most, so it is not surprising my generation could read and write reasonably well.

But today children are brought up on visual images. They may not read much but they can operate machines that have icons instead of text, and this is fast becoming the preferred form of communicating, as we increasing communicate via machines rather than face-to-face.

I once suggested that perhaps written language is a passing phase, and one day we'll go back to communicating directly in pictures. Whether they are drawn by hand or machine is another matter.

More info: Children's Drawings


Stan

Doodling

All animators are doodlers. Typically they start at school and draw pictures in their notebooks when they should be listening to their teachers. People bored at meetings doodle, and graffiti is a form of doodling. It is one of our natural instincts that has never really been utilised for education.

There is a clear cut distinction between doodling and drawing, with doodling it is organic; a shape grows without real purpose. Quite often it is a letter or shape that exists, and it vaguely reminds you of something so you add a bit here and there, and then it takes on a form of its own.

I once wrote a book called 'How Do You Doodle' based on using letters, numbers, and simple shapes as starting points for children to create pictures. The numbers 0 - 9 can all be easily used as noses (www.makemovies.co.uk) As writing developed from pictures, it does not take much imagination to reverse the trend.

An interesting site is at http://www.zefrank.com/gallery/dtoy_gal/index.html which has some animated shapes you can doodle with. Although these are limited, they make a good introduction to animation for children.

Another fun site is at http://www.morphases.com/editor/ This doesn't require any drawing skill, but allows you to change the facial features around in many ways.
Although it calls itself Morphases, it isn't actually morphing in the way animation changes a picture from one shape to another. An introduction to the principles of animation can be found on http://cartoonster.com/ It is one of many sites that show basic techniques.

There are very many 'Morphing' programs used for Special Effects (SFX), but the idea was first popularised in Felix the Cat going back to the earliest days of animation. And of course the Aardman Animation creation 'Morph', the little clayman who could change himself into anything, and initiated the highly successful 'Creature Comforts' and all that followed.

Other Doodling sites: Doodle


Stan

Drawing

Usually the first problem I find with teaching children to draw is getting them to hold a pencil correctly.
As a child before the war we had to spend hours doing copper-plate script to write neatly. It was boring, but you could read most children's writing. Not so today with biro's and word processors.

I always say "Hold your pen like a dart", but though that is typical for animation, Fine-artists use different methods. One method I came across is at http://thegluckmethod.com/html/freelesson/index.html which is worth looking at.

You don't need to be able to draw to animate though. Take a look at:
www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/java/smoothteddy/index.html (just type in 'smooth teddy' to get listings) to see the trend in simple animation. This appears not to be a commercial program yet, but it will be fun for kids when it is.

Another similar 'instant' animation program beingdeveloped is http://www.k-sketch.org/
This could really take off in schools when it's available.

This trend will bring back the Light-pen as an input device. They were common in the 1960s but went out of fashion when the mouse and drawing tablet became available.

Another recent development yet to hit the shops is a screen that is so thin and flexible it can be rolled up. This would be suitable for a cheap light-box/monitor when it's available.

Then there is Googles own drawing program at http://sketchup.google.com/product_suf.html
It does 3D geometric shapes but easy to use.

It will be interesting to see if a killer-application comes these instant animation programs as there is no doubt that there is a great need for a graphical language that overcomes the barriers of the spoken and written ones.

Look at: Drawing Techniques

Stan

Draw a Pig

I came across this site http://drawapig.desktopcreatures.com/ while looking for psychological drawing tests.

Teaching children to draw gives a good insight into how they think and see the world. I was surprised to find that children in London still draw houses with smoke coming out of the chimneys even though most have never seen this happen. But then, most houses still have chimney pots even though they are not used. Children draw what they think as against what they see.

Pigs are difficult animals to animate. They don't have hand-like trotters; vary little in features, and typically described as fat-ugly-greedy-dirty. In fact a good cliche for all we dislike, and this may be because in some ways they can appear quite human; more so than a cat or dog.

Thier place in animation is to represent the villian as in 'Animal Farm'. Of course, we all love Miss Piggy in the Muppets, but that because she associates with other loveable characters.
Foxes and Wolves are also villians while dogs are heroes. Cats seem to take on any role, as do monkeys, while horses are always good.
The psychological links between people and animals has always been exploited, and never more so than in animation. Drawing animals gives some useful insight into how we see the world.

Some more drawing test sites: Psychological Drawing Tests



Stan

stan@MakeMovies.co.uk

Getting Started in Animation

The purpose of this Blog is to look at some of the many Animation sites around and see what's new; what's interesting, and where they fit into the great scheme of things animation-wise.

My interest is mainly to get animation into schools and the community as I used to run children's workshops, and in particular, classes for Special Needs children, so had to find ways that children with no experience of animation; no particular skills, and not much time to practice, could produce work they found fun and creative.

Many of the children had physical and mental handicaps, so techniques had to be devised suitable to their capabilities. Much of this work can be found on my site www.MakeMovies.co.uk so this Blog is an appendage to that.
That site does list links to other animation sites, but this is the place to look at what's going on, and the trends.

For idle moments look at: Animation

Stan