Something I'd been looking into for a while was stop motion animation. This is a technique that physically manipulates an object so that it appears to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a fast sequence. Think of things like Morph, or 'The Trap Door'. One thing I have noticed, however, is that art and craft type activities can often make people feel more anxious than physical ones. The idea often brings up memories for some of being told they 'just weren't artistic' at school. So when I found Jennifer Kidd,from Ctrl+Art+Del and had a chat to her,she seemed exactly the type of person who could lead our group of unsuspecting participants in this activity.
I instructed our adventurers to meet at Canning Town station,which I know had already caused a few murmurs of what exactly might await us in this outlying area of east London? I had to manage expectations as we gathered on a grey Saturday morning that we weren't going to get a flight from London City Airport (sorry!) A short walk and we were at the London City Island Gallery. Now this on itself is a little hidden gem,a collection of eclectic art all sourced from the locals in the area. The perfect backdrop to this creative pursuit.
Talk then turned to the recent story of starfish being washed up on the beaches at Ramsgate, and so immediately my little character became the victim in our yet to be developed storyline. It was heartwarming to see how engrossed everyone was in this childhood modelling fabric for almost 2 hours. It made me wonder if I should invest in some plasticine to use at the end of a busy day! I could also hear random snippets of conversations about the different groups character names and personalities. We were then encouraged to develop this further and think about what the characters fears might be, and how they would interact with each other.
Jenny explained some things we should think about when we did our storylines, such as should we communicate certain messages with speech bubbles, or would the story be self-explanatory? There is also the option to add sounds and music in of course, but we realised we were up against time.....
The time just disappears when you are acting director for these animations. Trying to frame the shot just right, and get the perspective and continuity. I can see why in the credits of Pixar films there is always a long list of 'Pixar babies' who have been born during filming. Apparently a frame in one of these films can take 24 hours to render, and a 90 minute film will have on average about 130,000 frames!
Oh and if you are now inspired to come along to a future nnoodl adventure, the April one is sold out, but our next one on 9th June is now booking up, go to the 'Packages' page here to snap up your place before it sells out!
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