Previous readers may of read that I was starting a course in Digital Animation, which is something I have wanted to pursue for some time now. Well that time has come and I have just finished my first week. My timetable goes pretty much as follows, until November:

• Monday – History and Theory / Screening
• Tuesday – Animation Principles
• Wednesday – Go to the Stannary
• Thursday – Motion Studies
• Friday – Self Directed

There was mixed thoughts from the class about having History first thing on a Monday. Fortunately it was not like History as I remember it in school – this actaully held my attention like a vice.

The History and Theory session encouraged us to look at things from a fresh persepective, by talking about representations, concepts and what they mean. Some of the topics mentioned reminded me a lot of Ceci n’est pas une pipe by René Magritte.

The screening session was essentially watching a film. We watched Coonskin, the 1975 animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film had a lot of controversy surrounding it even before initial release (Paramount dropped it after being pressured), causing the film to be delayed substantially and even renamed. The film, which was supposed to be an attempt to break racial stereotypes, was brought down by members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and protests lead by baptist and activist Al Sharpton, none of which had seen the film themselves.

In the Animation Principles session we went back to basics, looking at the techniques used to create a Zoetrope and creating a few ourselves. A Zoetrope creates the illusion of movement using a series of static images which are span in rapid succession.  Whilst in Tokyo I was lucky enough to visit the Pixar: 20 Years of Animation Exhibition at Roppongi Hills, where I saw a large scale Zoetrope in action which used models and strobe lighting (rather than flat images and a small viewing window). Below is a video I found on Youtube of the Zoetrope in action at DisneyLand.

edit: Incase the video will not load, the direct link to the video is here.

After experimenting with our own Zoetropes, we were given 12 postcards each. Each postcard was to be a frame and we had to morph a circle into something over those 12 frames. I believe that a television in the UK runs at 25 fps (frames per second), so when the frames are reversed (to return to a circle), the animation is about 1 second long. You can see the one I made at the top of this post.

So that is a quick summary of the first 2 days of my first week. I think I will break up the week into more posts from now on, else I’m going to lose you all. Motion Studies which I did today I will cover when I next post. I may even split the Digital Animation category into sub-categories, one for each area and post individually for each. We will see how it goes.

For now, good night.

Royzy