Tuesday 5 November 2013

And then there were...

Five! My five core participants showed for the 4th art workshop session today, which I was pleased with as this made the session much more manageable as they were very excitable today!

The activity I set them was to paint bucket in Photoshop all of the frames I had photographed and cropped yesterday, so that the inside of the drawn figures were white, and the outside of the drawn figures were chequered, so that they would be black when imported into the editing software, which was 'sick' according to one of the group.

I think maybe because this was a more focused, sit and concentrate activity, it wasn't as popular as the outlining or inking. Not that this group aren't capable of focussing, I think it being bonfire night they must have been a bit more excited and using the Macs in the library space also made them livelier for some reason.

Still it was an interesting session. I had set the group 30 images each to paint bucket, trying not to underestimate their capabilities like with the outlining exercise. But this exercise does take patience and also getting used to Photoshop and the particular functions I was asking them to use.....

One of the group is very talented at animation and it seems to have captured his imagination. In fact, he showed me in Powerpoint how to make the whole of the background black with just the white outline of the drawings remaining, kind of reversing the image we started with. I didn't even know you could animate in Powerpoint. More learning for me.

The group are happy to continue the task on Thursday, the penultimate session. I think they want to see an outcome soon.....I will show them a taster of what the amended, paint bucketed frames look like in the editing software on Thursday if there's time.

Finished the session by handing out the flyers for the event which I'm happy we've now got and will discuss with the Teacher on Thursday about the exact proceedings for the event and what help I'll need.

Despite a slightly unsettled session on the Macs, the participants still said they enjoyed the session in the evaluation forms. I just didn't have time to take many pictures of the process and anyway, only 2 of the group have brought their photo consent forms back so don't want to compromise that!

Finally, I can't believe I have finished stapling the remaining 600 odd cells ready to outline tomorrow. I don't think I'll get them all done but hope I will in time for another rostrum session later this week.

Funny how quick I've become at stapling the tracing paper to the print outs of the cells and the realisations I've had about the project and my process and how this is about my continued learning as much as the young artists.  Its also amazing how the project is constantly evolving and the themes that are surfacing, particularly the idea of contrasts for example, from learning something quick / in a short space of time (flamenco) compared to carrying out a very labour intensive process of traditional rotascoping. This fits in well with my research about process and outcomes and I look forward to sharing this within the final displayed work.

Project participant paint-bucketing a frame 

Our event flyer!






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