Recently in Project Reflections Category

I loved this project. It was so fun to do and translated well into a lesson plan.

There were a few things that I disliked about the process:
1.) The tempera paint really smelled extremely toxic.
2.) As I mixed it the paint got muddier and muddier.
3.) I should have taped the plastic sheeting down.

The monoprints worked very well. And the music was a great way to paint. It would be fun to experiment with different kinds of music (I used classical).

The first day of the Workshop I was in charge of video documentation. This was a very enjoyable experience, since I enjoy behind the scenes work.
As a mentor for the rest of the workshop I aided in the animation process with the students. We used the following programs with the students: Photoshop, Quicktime, and Garageband. In my post processing I also used Adobe Illustrator. I found myself wishing we could just focus on one or two aspects of the animation process. This would have been to the students benefit to learn a program really well rather then having to learn a completely new interface every afternoon. Even if we had just cut out Garageband they would have had more time to work on the animation. I felt like my fellow mentor and I did to much of the animating and that if the students had been given more time they could have completed the animation on their own. One of our students was absent for two weeks, which took a real toll on his creative input in the piece. When he came back he was ready to work on the piece and did everything we asked, scene wise, and brought his own ideas to the table. Our other student was a hard worker and completed all of the characters in one night with time to spare. Because of the absences she had to work even harder to get twice as much done.
Overall I think the students had a good time and got a lot out of the experience. I know that I enjoyed teaching digital techniques.

My second experience with animation was an older animation technique: cutout animation. Cutout animation is related to stop motion but it specifically uses cutout elements made of paper, cardstock, fabric, or collage elements and photographs. We chose paper to make our pose-able dinosaur figures out of. During our twenty-minute presentation, the class created the motion.

I thought our figures were very successful but the support we used for the animation was reflective and not ideal for our use. We could have used more time to make the animation smoother and fuller but overall it went very well.

The work animate has its origin in the Latin word animātus which means 'filled with breath or air, quickened, animated'. This idea of 'giving life' and 'filling with breath' are excellent starting points for understanding the reasons we animate images and stories.

This project was my first experience with animation in general. I enjoyed working in photoshop layers for the animation frames. I liked the animal and the background I made so it was fun to work with. I spent several hours with the images and was pleased with the results.
My disappointment with this project is threefold. First, I did it in only twenty minutes in class. I wish I had more time. Second, I couldn't figure out how to add music before class ended. Thirdly and finally, when I went back to edit it again all the layers wouldn't show up so I couldn't work further with the project.

For my first animation I think it was very successful project.