December 8, 2011
During the fall of 2011, students in the Coleman Center for the Arts’ (CCA’s) Art Club learned techniques of stop-motion animation. Stop-motion is a form of animation that is most successful with objects—paper cut-outs, clay, puppets, found items—rather than drawings. A stop-motion animator makes a film by setting up a composition, taking a picture, moving the composition slightly, taking another picture, and repeating the process. When the individual images are strung together, the small changes made between each shot translate into movement on screen. Students in Art Club used the computer program iStopMotion and a web cam to create their animations, and iMovie to add sound and credits.
The first challenge of the semester was to create a film inspired by creative writing that was exactly ten seconds. The time restriction meant that our students spent weeks preparing for planned and precise film-making. Students came up with stories after experimenting with creative writing exercises and making strong revisions to their writing. They then found paper cut-outs that could artfully illustrate their stories and made story boards to follow while filming. Students learned to make purposeful design, lighting and editing decisions as they crafted their mini-films.
Subsequent stop-motion projects were more experimental and open. Students used found objects like office supplies, shop tools, tchotchkes, CDs, glass bobbles, cotton balls and soda bottles to create short films. Animators responded to the strengths of each object as they experimented, taking advantage of the reflective surface of a CD or the reptile-like movements a wrench can make. Finally, they used these found objects to create films in response to poems by Sonia Sanchez, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.
Throughout the semester, Art Club sessions opened with a discussion on a current event. Students learned about major currents of the fall of 2011, including the economy, Republican primary campaigns, Occupy Wall Street, death penalty debates and the immigration law in Alabama. These conversations made way for exchange of ideas and opinions about the world and the Sumter County community within the Art Club circle.
In December, the CCA and the students of Art Club invited the public to a screening of the stop-motion animations created during the semester. Family, friends, neighbors and teachers came to meet the artists, view the films, use iStopMotion to learn how to make their own short films and sing Christmas carols with nationally renowned local musician John Brown. The event was a great success and a wonderful send off to 2011.
The curriculum of Get Animated was designed and taught by Jocelyn Edens, Curator of Education at the CCA.