Towards the end of July I shall be involved in a workshop
for art teachers hosted by the City Learning Centre in
Gateshead. This is a follow up to a similar conference that
I presented at in July last year.
Animation is simple magic, be
it traditional drawing, cartoon, stop frame with objects,
plasticine, puppet, silhouette, rotoscope or
pixillation.Very easy to do, fun, works well either for
individual or for group work, what more could an art
teacher need?
I will introduce the basics of animation, the hardware and
software, alternatives such as flip books, and home made
zoetropes, and lip sync with preston blair's phenomes and
suggest sources of inspiration such as Muybridge,
Fleischer, Reiniger, McLaren, Trnka and Švankmajer, and
contemporaries such as Pes and Free Poster Films.
For the afternoon session I suggest looking at something
between Photoshop and Flash - I can't do either any great
justice in such a short time, but I could show a group how
we created the little flash animated robots - one of which
is on the front page of my website. I attach a couple of
examples.
Below is the blurb from last year
Dabs, Daubs and Digital
A practical training day for secondary school art teachers
introducing possibilities for Integrating ICT into the Art
curriculum.
Artists
have always experimented with the latest technology - the
lens, the press, photosensitive silversalts, magnetic tape,
plastics – the students we now teach have grown up with
computers, accepting digital technology as naturally as
previous generations assimilated and accepted the
television, the telephone, the camera, the printing press…
Everywhere we look there is evidence of computers being
used to generate the visual material around us. The power
of digital technology to facilitate communication is
revolutionary. The computer may already be as much a part
of the Art department as it ihas become a part of the
workplace and the home.
Computers will not replace traditional artistic skills nor
replace the tactile experience of working directly with
materials, but the whole range of digital technology is a
powerful addition to traditional tools and skills, both in
the creative process and in the process of communication.
As Art teachers we need to understand the fundamental aims
of our teaching, and be a part of the process of
assimilating emerging technologies in the light of these
aims.
This
training day aims to introduce art teachers to the
potential of digital media in a practical ‘hands on’ way
through a simple project that will encompass digital
Image-manipulation, animation and interactive multimedia,
through a presentation of digital artwork produced by
school students, and though a glimpse at current
developments – the use of mobile devices, blogging,
vlogging, vle’s and the potential significance of Bebo.
The course will be supplemented by worksheets, notes and
other relevant material on both printed and digital media
including:
Copies
of the handouts used on the day
Examples of digital artwork produced by students
A list of useful and interesting web site addresses
A list of Computer Applications along with a brief
description of each
Some illustrated lesson plans
We would hope to cover most if not all of the following:
Accessing images from scanning, digital cameras CD and
Google (and the thorny question of copyright)
Digital manipulation of images using Adobe Photoshop;
cutting and pasting, transformations, Adjustments,
distortions, effects, filters and Plugins
Using Photoshop and various other applications to create
simple but fun and effective animations
Publishing work on the Internet
The day will aim to:
suit a wide variety of experience
Suit users of both IBM/PC and Apple Mac platforms
Be a good mix of hands on experience, demonstration and
presentation