Animation basics

Autumn 2012 a new animation students started their studies. Studies began with a basic course during which students made small exercises with different objects under the camera.

The aim was to study basic principles of animation and expression with movement  using f.eg. matches, needles, buttons, whatever objects. Students could also use sand and plasticine and other materials. They worked in studio with Canon cameras and Stop Motion Pro supervised by teacher, Elli Vuorinen.

Here are some clips and comments of the student works. All clips can be found on Taideakatemia’s Vimeo site.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/49909828[/vimeo]

Astri Laitinen: “During the course our teacher Elli Vuorinen kept on underlining the importance of pauses. First I didn’t pay enough attention to that and the result was that it was quite difficult to follow what was happening in the animation. For instance the exercise of animating action the duration of my creature’s movements were all equally fast. Finally in the last sand animation exercise my pair Mirka Raasakka and I managed to establish the rhythm we were going for. The assignment was to animate an aggressive touch, and in our animation there were a balloon and a needle, and you may guess what happens.”

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/49909829[/vimeo]

Jouko Raudasoja: “On the second week of our superfun course we got our hands on some plastercine, and after a brief flashback of childhood plays we concentrated on matter of stretch and squash. First we tried some animating bouncing balls, boogers and whatnot, which strech when moving really fast and squash when hitting a plane. After playing around a bit whith these, we also built short stories that contained morphing plastercine figures and yet added all the previous learnt elements: Acceleration, anticipation, stretch&squash etc.”

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/49830538[/vimeo]

Joiku Rauhala: “After animating individual buttons (thanks for letting us borrow your family buttons, Outi!), matchsticks, pinecones and whatnot we finally got to use them to build more complex characters, which was something we had been itching to do since the beginning. In the video you can see the results of us exploring anticipation, overlapping action and takes+accents – simple things that enhance your animation tremendously. Why so many of the animations end up in carnage and destruction, we just don’t know.”