animation class - the 2nd time through

Last semester I led students through exercises that taught in-betweening (drawing the frames that go in between the main character actions). We covered basic character design using the lessons created by Larry's Toon Institute. I had each student design a project by creating a character and a story board outlining 30 seconds of action - they drew one key frame for each second of the animation. Then they used in-betweening techniques to fill in all the details of the action. I thought we'd all finish around November and I'd arranged an animation stand at SFAI so they could shoot onto film. In the end, so few students finished we decided to shoot on DV using Frame Theif - a shareware program I highly recommend.

Only two students completed their animation in time for media night - Drea inked and colored her film, and Jonathan just inked it. One student is nearly finished and needs me to "remind" her to complete it... she's only about an hour away from being done. One finished drawing and shooting it - he just needs to edit and add music. That's four of seven. That leaves 3 students with incomplete projects. It became evident that a 30 second animation is a lot more than they bargained for.

It's my second time through my curriculum. It's really satisfying to revise the lessons and try them again. I'm correcting mistakes and rearranging the order of things. I've got 7 students again - they're all from the first year class. 6 boys and Manya.

This time around they've learned in-betweening and some basic character design in the first two sessions. A third class was spent designing a character and elaborating one frame - putting a character in a simple setting. They were each given an inking pen to ink the character onto a cel. Next week they'll paint the characters on their cels. We'll then lay them over a variety of backgrounds to understand the use of layers. Instead of each student doing their own 30 second animation, I think we're going to do a collaborative piece so that students who draw well can draw, some can in-between, and others who prefer to ink and paint will have a job to do. The flaw in that plan is coming up with one film idea they will all get behind.

It's a great class - I love teaching it and I think the students learn a lot by doing a long term, labor intensive project - the payoff is really big in animation. Everyone loved seeing their drawing come to life and I think they have a sense of accomplishment that rivals the narrative filmmakers much longer projects. With multiple times through the course, I hope to design it in just a way that it fits the students temperaments, gives big rewards for sustained effort, and is set up so that all of the students feel that they've succeeded.