Not much progress with my film the lat weeks, but a lot of animation workshop with kids during the summer holidays. Today I'd like to share a clip with you which is animated by 7 to 11 years old school kids, who also made the fish puppets:

Deep Down in the Sea …Life's Raging

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The animation is supposed to be a background for a children's musical, "The Rainbowfish", which is a popular children's book in Germany. A children choir is going to sing one or two songs from the musical during a charity event in October at the Stadttheater in Minden. Since there are a lot of other artists and singers, they needed a background which is easily (un)decorated. So I suggested to project an animated underwater sequence and tadaa! – I had another job.

The day we produced the animation, I had about 20 children around me, for over eight hours. I first did a small training animation, so they then hopefully knew what they were doing, and after that, everyone who wanted to animate was asked to make a fish or any other underwater creature. It was an awesome experience. Despite I were deaf and nearly dead by the end of the day, the kids were lovely and did a great job!

We shot the sequence under the camera, from above. All of the fishes and turtles and jellyfishes laid flat on the table. There's a lot of light flickering due to a sunny day but it works nice with the background I added in post production. I also added some music and credits but this is just for their DVD. At the charity event kids from three primary schools will provide the music.

For the last school year I taught animation to student groups from two schools within a project called Kultur und Schule. The idea is, that students should meet artists there and try something new apart from all the useful things they learn in schools… The program runs some very interesting projects (which of course depends on the artist offering it), and mine.

No, seriously: I thought it might be difficult to keep them on it for a whole year. But they did a great job. The kids of one of my classes who did the video below are around the age of 16 now. It was their last year at school, and they spent much more time making the film than they should have…

They made everything by theirselves: the puppets, the sets and the lighting, the animation and most of the sound effects, too. At the end we ran out of time so we took a few iMovie sound effects to brush the piece up a bit. They tried to be very professional, and learned quite a lot (all of them animated for the first time). What I really like is the kind of humor they show… They're very influenced by media and have a huge repertoire of ideas and quotations. But see for yourself:

An Igor Gone Astray

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Here's a small translation for everyone who isn't familiar with the German language:

An Igor Gone Astray

Evil Mistress (from the off): Note to self: I definitely must dissect a clown. – Igooor?

A poster reads: Circus Buttercup at the Land Of Igors/Horror Valley on Remembrance Sundays at witching hour

(Crowd is cheering while entering the circus tent.)

Evil Mistress: Go! Get me the clown! …Go!

While Igor throws the smoke bomb, the audience asks surprised: What's going on?

After the Evil Hand has vanished, the Evil Mistress says: Igor!? …I must follow them!

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I think the rest is pretty self-explanatory, but if have any questions about the story, feel free to ask.

Things the kids learned:

• simple puppet and set making from materials like plasticine, paper, cardboard and watercolors
  
• setting up an amateur animation studio
  
• developing stories and planning animation
  
• that animation isn't the biggest part of producing an animated short
  
• it's all about planning
  

I learned:

• If kids like what they do, motivation isn't a problem.
• If you show them how important things can be which they don't like very much, they'll do it.
• It's great fun to work with teenagers, and it can be hilarious.

Thank you Pia, Janine, Maren, Maike and Ilhan for the great time!

Last week I gave an animation class for kids at a local education center. I teached a lively (and lovely!) group of seven boys from the age of 8 to 12 years. The course was ment to give them a general idea about the possibilities of hand-made animation techniques.

Some of the kids were absolute naturals and we had a lot of fun with all the techniques we tried... We started with moving toys, next plasticine and sand, but since there were a lot of boys who love to draw, we also did classical drawn animation, too. (We finished 12 animated clips that week... They were so motivated!)

I’d like to share some of my favourites of the drawn animation with you, since these are well done for kids of that age. The boys have quite a faible for any kind of violent stories, so if you don’t like explosions and dead stick figures, don’t watch the clips. I simply wasn’t able to encourage them to draw any pet stories... I’m sorry for that!

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This one is drawn by Timur, 10 or 11 years old.

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Enrico is 9 years old and drew an volcanic eruption.

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Hendrik was our baby being only 8 years old, but I think he did a terrific animation.

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Bernhard was the oldest, almost 13 years old, and almost didn’t stop drawing again...

Violence in Media Projects With Kids

Violence is a big issue in working with kids of that age. I remember that we played cops and robbers or Spiderman against God knows who or any other story about two groups fighting each other when I was a kid. But the kids today see much more violence in the TV, on their computers or on their mobiles than we did when we were younger....

This is not meant to be a forum for kitchen table wisdom but I really wonder how to deal with it. I always try to point out to the kids that violence just for their pure aesthetic amusement is an absolute no-go. But the kids usually don’t perceive it as a problem because violence so often is presented as a pure a aesthetic action and not as a pathogenic version of healthy aggression in movies or video games. The kids often don’t see any difference between those...

Do you have any ideas how to deal with this? Do you have any, and if, what are your experiences?

After finishing the Eurydice character design the work on my film project has been dragging the last days... But since I'm a person who barely sits still and loves to work, I'd like to share some pictures from my school workshops with you.

The kids are about 16 years old and we have about 2 hours per week together. They're quite ambitious and like to tell some kind of romantic and scary comedy story... I didn't post much about them since they has prepared puppets and props for months now.

But yesterday we put some of the things together and took some pictures to see how it may work. And heck: it works great! In the picture above you see Igor, the main character sitting on a desk and waiting for his first assignment.

The five of them do a terrific job and they collaborate impressively... They spend so much time and energy to create this lovely things and puppets, and they try to do it as professional as poosible...They love to play, too, and every week we have a great deal of laughter. If the animation is going to be as great as their models are, this would becoming a very nice film... But see for yourself:

The kids care a lot about details and try to give it a professional touch. They put so much effort in creating every single piece. It's simply nice to watch.

Igor, sitting in a piece of landscape.

These are all the finished puppets up to now placed in one of the settings. It's quite stunning how all the single pieces fit together... (Oh, and sorry for the blurred pictures!)

It's amazing to see what's possible in a such a little while. I'm already so proud of them. We still have some months left and I guess we're going to start animating in two to three weeks... To see how everything comes together in the end is very encouraging for me and my own project as well...

Keep It Simple

Since it's rather difficult to teach the fairly abstract principles of animation to kids at the age of ten to twelve, I now try to improve their understanding by just showing them different possible paces right before they start to move their puppets on their own. This seems to work pretty well.

This is Sammy's title design for strickwars animation. Guess what's his favourite movies?
Ten years old Sammy always wants to bring his plasticine stick figures come to life, they always fight with laser swords. I asked him to do a dry run to test his puppets first. For this I demonstrated him the very basics of animation like how to move his puppet slowly and how he'd archived a fast movement. The important thing here is that I didn't explain it again.

I found out that a spoken explaination often is too abstract for kids of that age. But if I'd show them how to animate with my hands, they absolutely understand. At least so it seems.

Due to the fact that we're working on five different little projects simultaneously, I went on to help the others with their puppets or props. When I turned back to Sammy a few minutes later, he looked very frustrated because he thought his animation wouldn't be good. But he hasn't watched it in real time yet, and I just encouraged him to move on and just finish the movement before doing so.

Stick-Figures Test Animation

He did. And he did so well, that I was absolutely stunned by his test animation! He was so concentrated all the time and put so much energy in this effort, and it all paid off:

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When we finally called the others to watch the clip, it was nice to see how surprised they were realizing what they could do with animation. Every time the kids and I watch even the tiniest amount of self-made animation they use to call for a celebration. And this time Sammy indeed earned the standing ovations.

or: Teaching Animation (2)

As you're reading my blog regularly, you'd know that I'm teaching two animation classes with kids in schools. A few weeks ago I introduced the students to pixilation, an absolutely outstanding animation technique.

Since their results are great and lovely, I'd like to share those great videos with you with their given permission:

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My personal favourites are the restaurant scene above and the murder below. – The kids were doing a great job!

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At that time, the kids and I were still working on the understanding of animation and it's principles. I wanted them to learn about the lengthy process of animation by literally experiencing it. Each clip (except the short dancing sequence) took about 20 to 30 minutes and they had great fun – although eypecially the younger were moaning all the time it needed to complete the pieces. But they love the results! And so do I.

I brought several items that day I had collected randomly at my home, like a fork and a spoon, a teapot, some cups, a rope, juggling balls, clothes and stuff like that. They were meant as an invitation to play and the kids did their best as you could see.

Most of the time they moved their limbs and objects theirselves but occassionally some of the others helped to correct movements or other details like hair and else. We're going to add sound effects to the videos later, so it might be much more fun to watch them again then.

Pixilation

Pixilation is a variant of animation in which real people act frame by frame like stop-motion puppets in front of the camera. The word pixilation might spring from the expression pixilated which again refers to the Pixies, an old English fairy folk – due to the weird, shaky or crazy movements this technique creates. At least so they say.

Norman McLaren is an artist who had made regular use of this technique. He seems to be the one who coined the phrase, and his film Neighbours (1952) is a great example of how it could work and works. Perhaps only Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer music video (1986) is a bit more popular object lesson on pixilation. You'll find both Neighbours and Sledgehammer on youtube.

And I nearly forget to mention one of the greatest pixilation movies ever here, The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993) by Bolexbrothers in which they combined pixilation with stop-motion animation. Due to the sheer endless list of great pixilation films and videos it's easy to miss one. There are a lot of contemporary filmmakers working in this field of animation right now.

Oh, and during my research on pixilation I found several information about the Sledgehammer clip. Did you know that Aardman was involved, and so were the Brothers Quay? Rumours say that a young Nick Park animated the chicken dance... I'm not sure about the Quay Brothers here, I always thought it had been Jan Švankmajer who added his unique style. However, I wasn't able to find clear information about that. Do you know anything more specific? Feel free to add a comment!

How to teach something which is almost unteachable? Animation is mostly based – as a lot of other things, too - on experiencing it and its priciples. I could read and being told about it. But it would best if I just try to expand my sense for movement and timing by simply practising animation itself and by reflecting what I did. Now I that I teach animation in two school projects, I instantly realize which explanation works and which doesn't.

I have two groups of students. The younger are about ten to twelve years old and the older kids are around the age of sixteen. At first, they developed a lot of paper stripes for my zoetrope the other weeks. Those worked great and the kids learned a lot by drawing them. My assumption seemed to be valid that children who work manually and encouraged will create amazing things... A lot of art teachers don't seem to know this... On the one hand I was surprised by how much they liked it, and on the other hand it just confirmed my guess.

After that time travel to the 19th century they wanted to move back to present time and to animate with plasticine. This hadn't gone well at first because especially the younger ones didn't understand that they had to move the puppets in little, sometimes even tiny steps related to what they want to achieve.

So I tried not to explain again but to design an exercise which helps them to understand the idea behind animation. I did this piece of work with both groups. So see the videos below:

25 Steps To Go With A Little Piece Of Plasticine

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The video above shows the exercise done by the younger children, the video below shows what my older students did.

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Each of them was given a piece of white plasticine of the size of a walnut. And they got 25 steps each to change the plasticine's shape, too. The kids normally animate on twos so it would make 2 seconds of animation per student. I wanted them to find out what they are and are not able to do within two seconds and few options.

Almost everybody was surprised by their results. Some of them found it very hard to extend the reshaping to the 25 different pictures and some of them thought it's way too little time to show what they'd planned. Especially one very impatient boy at the age of ten or eleven did a great job: when we started animating he eventually became so very calm and concentrated. It was lovely to watch. I found it most surprising that both groups animated similar shapes.

The summer holidays had ended several weeks ago and I still owe you some results from my workshops So, here it is:

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The text is completely in German. There are only a few spoken sentences mostly referring to the observed action.

I had two courses, and the video above was made by the younger kids. Their age ranged from 9 to 11. Altogether, the kids worked about 15 hours on that film. And yet I'm still stunned what they had archieved.

We started moving a simple wooden puppet so they could get a feeling on how generally animation works and how to use the computer and the software.

Two things happenend: first they were surprised how much work animation actually is and second, how much fun it is to watch the puppets coming to life.

I kept the setup simple trying not to concern them with too much technical stuff: We had an DV cam which we eventually used to record audio effects after filming. There were also two Ikea desk lamps and my tiny iBook with all the required software. And we had several cables we stuck to the floor with gaffer tape to avoid stumbling and after this, completely resetting our studio.

I tried to encourage the kids to tell a story together because I want to motivate them to bundle their energy. If anyone needed a pause, the others took over. Younger children often don't have too much stamina. This worked pretty good but we then had to face another problem...

The girls wanted to tell a pet story and the nine year old buy wanted to do an AC/DC concert. But we managed to put these opposites together as you can see above. The boy really was a fan and I hope AC/DC won't see a problem here. I just couldn't persuade him to use some other (rights free) music.

The kids had a great time and so had I. I love working with children because they tend to be totally free in their creative decisions. They just do things without struggling so much.

And despite the simple equipment their ideas were wonderful and realisable. They often found solutions on their own. And I learned from them again as well. My most favourite insight of that week is that we need to play to develope solutions. I am too often too worried about seriousity.

What are your experiences with kids and arts? Did you ever do (animation or art) workshops with kids? What did they teach you? I'd love to read your experiences.