WES OBRIGEWITSCH INSTRUCTOR SUMMARY~

 

 

Squish & Squash Hand-Drawn Animation

 

Entering into its second year, Squish and Squash: Experiments in Hand-Drawn Animation felt a lot more streamlined and focused. The workshop was a two day intensive immersion into animation for elementary and junior high students. Squish and Squash quickly goes into a brief history of animation, then adds some fundamental exercises. Then the students break into two groups and create public service announcements (PSAs). This year’s subjects were the Humane Society and the United Way. I believe starting off with a brief history is invaluable, showing the growth of the medium from a novelty art form to a powerful tool to express ideas and emotions. This helps the children see the potential of their final project.

Using a couple of fundamental exercises I can gauge where the children are in terms of their drawing skills. The first is a drawing exercise incorporating abstract shapes that start simple and get more complex. This is a great way to find out where the students are skill-wise. The second exercise is creating a zoetrope, a spinning wheel animation toy from the turn of the century. This allows the students to see how their animations work (or don’t work). The third is a bouncing ball exercise. This covers all the basic techniques--squish and squash, timing, and acceleration--allowing me to find out who is more advanced in drawing, observation, and attention skills. It also allows me to divide the groups into two equally-skilled groups for the final project. After all the exercises are complete, we break the students into those groups and start to brainstorm ideas for the PSAs. Everyone is then given homework to create characters and a story line.

On the second day the students compared homework and fine tuned their storyboards. Once the students had agreed upon storyboard and character designs they each took scenes to animate, color, and ink. After the drawings were finished we used a digital SLR camera with remote to capture the still images of the individual drawings. Each child filmed his or her own scenes using the camera mounted to a simple animation stand. The students also recorded their own sound effects to go with the film. Finally the digital images were brought into Final Cut Pro for editing.

That anyone can make an animated film in two days is amazing; for young children, it is utterly brilliant. This year’s group had a wonderful focus and work ethic, and it shows in the two finished films that were screened at the T Tauri Finale. I believe finishing the film is the most important accomplishment. Seeing the fruits of one’s labors gives a sense of pride and accomplishment. I applaud the students and hope to see them return next year.

 

 

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