Today is Tuesday. We met once more outside the Tan’s place at 8:50 and walked to the studio. JA has a Wacom tablet which his dad bought for him. He hasn’t used it before, but we set it up on his laptop along with the open source animation software ‘pencil 2d’. He did just fine, but working on the computer is not his favourite so we returned to the land of paper and crayon. I just wanted to make sure he had the software installed and a handle on how to use it should he decide to give it a go when I’m not there.

We looked through JA’s sketch book and he picked a drawing he would like to animate. A penguin on a rocky beach. He looked at a video on his camera as reference and animated the penguin flap and look up. Once he was happy with the penguin animation he drew a rocky background and traced it on to each frame. He then coloured each picture and after that photographed them with the animation app. we worked without a break for about 3 and a half hours. Jeanne told me the next day that usually they’ll do about 2 hours with a half hour break in the middle so this is a pretty prolonged and intense period of concentration. JA got a headache and we called it a day and went for lunch. on the way he introduced me to the person who makes paint in the paint shop. They make incredible acrylics.

On Monday we met at 8:50 outside the Tan’s apartment and I walked with JA to his studio. His mentor Jeanne (who is also a tenant of the studios) met us there. I was going to start with a simple flick book made with reference cards and a foldover clip but on the advice of Jeanne I busted out the peg bar and a ream of paper I had pre punched. JA finds it easier to work on a larger scale. I did a quick, simple ball bounce. First day of animation school stuff. Having seen what I did, JA drew his own ball bounce. We recorded it it on His iPad using the animation app I’d installed the day before. Next a little colour was added with pencil crayons.

Bouyed by this success I demonstrated simple morphing in a flip book. Circle to square to triangle. Again, JA made his own version after seeing how I’d done it. Finally in this session

I drew a figure of 8 track on a piece of punched paper and demonstrated how it could be used as a guide to animate a coloured blob whizzing about. Once again, after a practical demonstration JA took to it like a duck to water and a colour changing scribble was soon zooming about the iPad’s screen. JA asked that I help him carry his stuff back home. On the way he introduced me to some of the people he knows on Granville island. He requested that we meet agin the same time tomorrow.

I arrived in Vancouver late on a Friday night in the pouring rain. JA’s parents had arranged for us all to meet on Saturday afternoon, just so JA would know who i am and we’d not be going in cold on Monday morning. Unfortunately JA had plans already. His parents drove me around the city and Stanley park and showed me the sights which was lovely. We spoke a little about the project and arranged to meet mid morning on Sunday, JA too this time.
I met up with the Tan’s outside their apartment and we walked down to Granville island where JA’s studio is located. It is a lovely room with a big window in a complex of artist’s studios. On the walls hang a dozen or so recent works and by the entrance is a large rack with heaps of painted canvases. JA tells me about the group of seven, a Canadian collective of landscape painters from 1920 – 1933, who he is currently studying. He also shows me his sketch books from his recent cruise around South America. Seals, Llamas and penguins abound! Over lunch we installed an animation app on his iPad

CTS Trainer Dom Pitt is in San Antonio, Texas working with Artist Angela Weddle, one of the awesome creatives we’ve been connected to via Debra Muzikar at the Art of Autism

More to follow…

The final workshop has come and gone. I’ve really enjoyed these six and would rather like to return to Lynx to do more.

For this last session in this series we attempted something a bit more grandiose. A culmination of that which had been learned in the previous weeks. A group project. The subject, suggested by Lena at NAS was meeting new people/being the new person. As a group we discussed what that is like and based on that came up with a simple scenario. A person approaches a group of people, says hello, gets invited to go bowling and subsequently goes bowling.

Once we had our scenario worked out we wrote a list of the things we would need and divvied up their production among the group. Since we have left all of the things made by the group in previous weeks with the Lynx Centre we already had a ready made cast, but the main character was made from new.

The initial plan was to show how our character is feeling with a series of close ups of their face. Time however was not on our side. It is rather difficult and time consuming to portray complex, subtle emotions even for an experienced animator so instead we opted to use the slightly cheaty medium of the ‘thought bubble’ to more easily communicate the characters thoughts and feelings. We did get to use the close up trick to show the perhaps less nuanced sad face to happy face later on in the film though.

Eleven thirty rolled around and the group went off to film club, their animation only half finished. Not an achievement to be sniffed at though. Much of the first session was spent writing the story and making models and thought bubbles. Group 2 came to the rescue and finished the film off, completing the introduction sequence and adding the bowling and close up shots.

https://vimeo.com/264045845

I have been really impressed by how much these groups have achieved across these relatively short sessions. The Lynx iPads have istopmotion of them and we have left them with all of the models that have been made over the six weeks so I really hope at least a couple have picked up the taste and carry on making things.

After the success of the first lip-syncing workshop I thought I’d try and push it a bit further with a spot of character interaction. I got the guys to co-operate in producing a character interaction, some kind of short conversation. The sessions ended up being relatively brief.  Like this one.

Buoyed by a new supply of fresh plasticine there was model-making mayhem. I’m a particular fan of the orange and deep purple characters. In that piece they also used coloured backgrounds and giant plasticine facial features to make ultra close up versions of the character’s faces. It worked fantastically.

There was also a rather nifty conversation between a cat and a snail. I think this group have really got their collective head around the basics of lip sync. With a bit of practise they could get rather good at it.