I’m Gettin’ FunGky With My Animation

Posted by on Feb 21, 2012 in Animation, DePaul University CDM, General | 0 comments

Yes, I spelled it with a “g” as in Stellar Fungk, an old 1978 funk jam by a group called Slave. As we learned more about the early animation pioneers as well as a few from more modern times I wanted to continue investingating my experimental chops. This time I went completely abstract with no literal imagery. Just wanted to have the imagery moving rhythmically with the music with some tones sliding in between the movements.

Viking Eggeling, Walter Ruttmann, Oskar Fischinger and others as inspiration for this one. I made this one 30 seconds in length. Take a look.

Can’t you tell I had a lot of fun with this one? If I had more time I would definitely have stretched it out. I had a blast with this one and looking forward to more fun with 2D. Stay tuned and see what I come up with next.

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Emile Cohl Has Me Hooked On Abstract Animation

Posted by on Feb 15, 2012 in Animation, DePaul University CDM, General | 0 comments

Well he’s one one many that have me developing a taste for abstract animation this quarter. One of the cool classes I’m taking this Winter of 2012 is ANI422 Animation Styles and Techniques. I guess since my eye has begun to get attuned to abstract painting over the last few months, appreciating the abstract in digital media should be perfectly natural I guess.

The quarter began with us learning about some of the European pioneers of animation. They came along in the 19th century during the advent of film technology when people were first being mesmerized by moving images of people on a screen. Cohl is credited as being the first to amaze with illustrations that came to life on this new medium. His film Fantasmogorie is the standard reference in animation circles when it comes to how it was done more than a century ago.

His morphing figures make me go “ooh and ahh” now, even with his rudimentary motions, decades before the fundamentals of animation were established. During the quarter our projects are to be inspired by the variety of short films that we reveiw in class each week and our professor Lisa Barcy typically likes us make our shorts 10-30 seconds long. The abstract inspired my so here is my homage to the original master.

What do you think of my first effort? I plan to do more abstract (oftern referred to as “experimental” in modern animation parlance) inspired animation over time, as I continue to learn and research the topic so stay tuned to the blog for more.

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My Animation Graduate Seminar in Review

Posted by on Dec 29, 2011 in DePaul University CDM | 0 comments

At the beginning of the past Fall Quarter I shared my expectations of grad seminar as laid out by our professor Lisa Barcy. I wasn’t able to keep you updated over the quarter so I’m catching you up at the end. With our reading assignments and short film viewing in class each week I learned a lot of animation history and along with the background of different types of animation.
Such history makers as Winsor McCay turned out to be inspiration for my exploration of animating water during the term. He was masterful with his realistic representation of the element in The Sinking of the Lusitania. I also enjoyed Daniel Sousa’s Minotaur for it’s creative aquatic animation and the effective metaphorical use of it.

 
Here are my two papers on each of those films in flip book form.
 


 


 
Since I got so much practice using Flash in my Animation Mechanics course I decided to use it for my graduate seminar final as well. Lisa makes sure that we are ultimately producing some work even in her lecture classes and this one was no different. Check out my final project below as I get into my head and look towards the future.
 


 

The highlight of the term was our almost weekly guest lecturer. We had great visits from guest animators like Wayne Brechja the owner of Calabash Animation. This is a legendary Chicago based animation company so it was a real treat having Wayne share his insights on how they do their thing.

Some of our professors talked to us as well. Had a roaring time from Devin Bell who told us about his start in school. He showed his old student project Crank Balls that landed him into a career at JibJab. Meghann Artes shared some of her work with us including student film from her days at U.C.L.A. She’s worked at a bunch of places including Sesame Street. Jo Derry not only shared her unconventional, don’t-plan-it-all-out-before-you-start approach to animating her work, she answered the all important “How much do animators charge for a project?” question (thank you Jo, I’m revising my pricing structure as I type).

We gave presentations to each other as well. It’s always interesting to see classmates talents and learn what inspires and motivates them to do their art the way they do it. I’m pretty sure some great future collaborations will come of it. I have some REALLY talented classmates.

We did lots of reading and wrote a paper a week. One of the more interesting pieces of reading was Colourful Claims: towards a theory of animated documentary. It’s a philosophical take on animation as documentary tool, whether animation can be considered legit documentary since the characters portraying the action aren’t actual living beings.

 
We had a variety of animation related events that we could write about as well. One that was particularly interesting to me was the CartoonInk!: Emerging Comics In Context exhibit at one the the Art Institute of Chicago’s galleries in the Loop. It was an exhibit of alternative comics with a variety of subject matter, artistic styles and methods of print publishing. I have never seen such a wide variety of book styles.

One paper was an out our comfort zone paper focusing on an artistic style that we didn’t work with. I chose a recent mosaic Reaching Back; Moving Forward, Lest We Forget the Song of 47th St. Its a bricolage mural dedicated to the African American history of the neighborhood. Here are a few pics of the piece. Listen to the lead artist, Carolyn Elaine, tell you more about it.

 


 

 
This was a great seminar and I have a lot of conceptual take-aways that I use for future projects. The Winter Quarter lies ahead. I’m ready to rock and roll with the next of the two new classes in the cohort.

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My ANI460 Animation Graduate Seminar

Posted by on Sep 9, 2011 in Artists, DePaul University CDM | 0 comments

For the fall quarter of 2011 I will take my third class with one of my favorite professors, Lisa Barcy. Much of it will be an overview of the animation industry and careers. It’s going to cover a lot of aesthetics and cover some international styles. Our first night of class we looked at  a Japanese short film and a slightly longer Czech film so she has us hitting the ground right from the start just the way I like it. Lisa is our main stop motion professor. If you’ve never seen her work before this one is my favorite. Check it out.

 

Anonanimal from Lisa Barcy on Vimeo.

During our “getting to know you” introductions I learned that we have a couple of working animators in the class as well as a few people with an interest in comics, something that has been recently rekindled in me. Plenty of opportunity for collaboration and to learn how to make the transition from classroom to the animation workforce by people who have done it and are doing it.

Lisa is also making us spread our wings and see more of the local arts community outside our campus walls to events at venues like the Gene Siskel Film Center, Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. We’re also going to have professional animators including some of our own DePaul College of Computing and Digital Media professors as guest speakers in class and off campus. I’ll give a plug to my advisor Alexander Stewart who is curating his second Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation (this year’s URL coming soon).

We’ll also have lots of good reading and reaction papers to the reading and to films that we screen in class. Each of us will give informal presentations of subjects that we’d like to explore further and  final animated projects because although this isn’t a production class it is ultimately it’s about producing some work. I’m thinking about doing something with a superhero character especially since I’ve been inspired by all the comic artists I’ve met this summer. I’ll keep you posted on that when we get closer to actually planning projects.

Lisa is starting us off with  the first couple of chapters of “A Short Guide to Writing About Films” as a compliment to writing our papers more effectively and we’ll be using “Animation in Process” to learn about a variety of aesthetic approaches to the animation craft.

 

                             

It’s going to be another great term and I’m going to soak it all up in sponge-like fashion. Of course I’ll share some of my papers and projects with you guys over the next ten weeks so leave comments and tell me what you think as we go along.

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