When we were there we took part in an animation master class led by one of the main tutors in BA(Hons)Animation called Jodie.
Jodie showed us some clips of different animation techniques and explained roughly about the course and then we got straight into our first task which was to make a group "Metamorphosis" animation.
Each person was given a word which they had to draw and then the person next to them gave their word to them.
To do all of this we started out with a pegbar which was used as a support to hold all our pages together keeping them still for when we were drawing so it gave the best results for tracing. The paper we used was semi transparent and was called "Layout Paper". When we were drawing we drew our images originally with pencil and then went over it in pen. We traced over some images so we could see what we were transforming it from each time we drew a new image.
You had to draw a minimum of 12 frames to change one of the objects into the other. It worked out to be 24 fps as we did what is called " shooting twos". What this meant was that we used two frames of the same image to make it a smoother transformation.
My original image was an apple and I had to transform that into a telephone. I drew 18 individual drawings to show the transformation bit by bit.
Once everyone had drawn the images each person went over to the "Rostrum Camera" and there they took two pictures of each drawing. They took two pictures of each drawing so that when it was played through the images didnt just disappear in a split second. As each frame was played through it gave the appearance of each object transforming into the next smoothly.
Our second task we were faced with was to make an 18 frame "Zoetrope" sequence.
We drew 18 individual pictures to demonstrate a simple short animation sequence, the best way to produce a successful one was to make it simple and distinctive. Also it was best to use the majority of the space on the paper. With my drawings i coloured them in to make them bold and stand out. The paper we drew on was 9.5cm x 8cm. My sequence consisted of a fluffy potato shaped cute animal which was listening to music moving about and dancing to it.
The way we made this into an animation and work was placing the images in a long line and sticking them together to make a strip of drawings. We then placed it into the round barrel of the zoetrope.
The zoetrope its self was a spinning barrel with slits in body equally its spaced around it. When you spun the zoetrope you had to try and look through the slits and keep focus to see inside to view the animation. When you watched the sequence it gave the appearance of it coming to life. Even though it was a short sequence it was effective.
At the end of our day we were shown our group metamorphosis which turned out well and recapped on what we had learnt. The day gave us an insight to what we could in the future be able to do and accomplish in different areas of the Creative and Media Industry.
