CAM-JAM 2011 : Animation – Cartoon Art Museum – San Francisco CA (ages 10-14)
May 22, 2011 – Artist event
Cartoon Boot Camp at the Cartoon Art Museum – San Francisco CA (ages 10-14)
June 6-10, 2011 – Story Board to Animatic
June 13-17, 2011 – Intro to Stop-Motion
June 20-24, 2011 – Dynamic Character Design
Cartoon Art Museum Classes:
Cartoon BOOT Camp – Summer 2011
June Cartooning Classes: Monday through Friday, 2:00pm – 4:00pm
Cost: $100 per week for Cartoon Art Museum members, $135 for non-members
It’s time for our sixth annual Summer Cartooning Classes! Cartoonist Brian Kolm will teach students how to storyboard, the basics of traditional animation and stop motion, and how to create their own cartoon characters, super heroes and more!
Ages: Intermediate level artists from 10-14 years old.
Time: All sessions run Monday through Friday from 2:00PM to 4:00 PM at the Cartoon Art Museum
(For past students: please note the time of these classes is different.)
Number of students: The class size is limited to no more than 14 students. The class is filled on a first come, first served basis.
Cost*: $100 per week for CAM members, $135 non-members – per student for each session. Fees must be paid in full to secure a seat in the class.
Sign up as a member and save! ( http://cartoonart.org/join-support/membership/ )
Supplies: Basic Drawing Materials will be provided. Students are welcome to bring in their personal sketchbooks and materials.
To enroll: click on the links below for each class you are signing up for. Online reservations are sponsored by Guestlist.
Please also fill out and submit the waiver and emergency contact form. Mail or hand-deliver the completed waiver and emergency form to: Cartoon Art Museum; 655 Mission Street; San Francisco, CA 94105 attn: Cartoon Boot Camp, email to: office@cartoonart.org or fax to: 415-243-8666. For any questions, please call: 415-227-8666 x300.
*Cancellation: All participants must be pre-paid prior to the first day of the session. Full refunds given with 2 weeks cancellation notice prior to the first day of the session. 50% refund given within 7 to 13 days of the first day of the session. No refunds given within 6 days prior to the first day of the session.
Stop motion is one of the earliest animation techniques, but it remains one of the most vibrant and challenging forms of animation. Films like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline, Wallace and Gromit, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Chicken Run and James and the Giant Peach have led to a resurgence in this amazing genre. This class will explore the basics of stop motion films, and teams of students will create their own short animation as a final project.
Skills featured: Teamwork, Frame by Frame Animation, Digital Video Editing, Storytelling
Samples created by previous classes can be seen here:
Great stories begin with great characters! Through storytelling and design techniques, students will create their own original characters, developing the character’s personality and appearance, resulting in a final piece of presentation-ready artwork.
Skills featured: Drawing, Basic Anatomy, 3d Visualization, Storytelling, Penciling, Inking
Storyboards have been used since the early days of animation, evolving into a way to pre-visualize a film before time and money was spent on a project. Animatics combine storyboards with sound to create a “real time” film.
This class will teach the art of pre-visualizing a film project through the storyboard stage. Teams of students will visualize a short scene with pre-recorded audio.
Samples created by last year’s class can be seen here:
Skills featured: Teamwork, Storytelling, Digital Video Editing
I will be teaching Cartoon Boot Camp for the 5th year in a row at the Cartoon Art Museum June 6-10, June 13-17, and June 20-24. More details coming very soon.
I am going to be teaching 3 classes at the Cartoon Art Museum over the winter holiday break the week between Christmas and New Years Eve. December 28,29 and 30th 2010. Click on the links to sign up for the class on-line.
Start off the new year right with these fun classes at the Cartoon Art Museum over the winter holiday break December 28-30. All classes includes materials and admission to the museum.
Drawing Fun for Parents and Kids – Family Fun Class
December 28 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:30pm – 2:30pm
Cost: $10 per-person (only 1 to 2 kids per adult please)
About: What a better way to finish off the year then a cartooning class for an adult and child to have fun learning how to draw together. The class will feature many short creative challenges and drawing exercises that will both delight and stimulate creativity. Reserve your space: http://guestli.st/38694
Intermediate level drawing classes for ages 10-14. These classes are aimed at young artists who already are drawing and cartooning all the time.
December 29 (Wednesday) Crazy and Cute Creatures
Ages: *intermediate level/ages 10-14
Time: 1pm – 3pm
Cost: $20
About: Students learn the basics of cartooning while making up their own original creature characters who are cute and/or crazy. The class will work with drawing construction, design, expressions and attitude. Reserve a seat: http://guestli.st/38703
December 30 (Thursday) Happy Heads and Fierce Faces
Ages: *intermediate level/ages 10-14
Time: 1pm – 3pm
Cost: $20
About: This class will focus on learning to draw the face and expressions and using them to tell a story. It will touch upon visualizing the head in 3D, showing different ages, emotions, exaggeration and using reference. Reserve a seat: http://guestli.st/38712
All classes are taught by instructor Brian Kolm (Atomic Bear Press) atomicbearpress.com.
Well, my students this past week were really doing some amazing things, and they wanted me to let them know of the tools and software that was used in class and I want to share with all of you in webland what they achieved.
First off we did some Pixalation and Stop Motion. Those are both the same thing, the moving of objects filmed one frame at a time. For Stop Motion we were using and older version of iStopmotion (version 1). It’s Macintosh based and very simple to use which is why I like it. I have not really had a chance to work with version 2 yet, but would like to try in the future. www.boinx.com/istopmotion.
The program was used with just a DV camcorder on a tripod pointing down at a table surface and connected to the computer with a firewire cable. We animated clip art from Dover: http://store.doverpublications.com/0486995666.html which I printed out from the files that came with the book. There was also a battle of Fish vs. Birds with the students drawing their own art.
iStopmotion was also used to film some classic style drawn animation pencil tests of a ball bouncing. The students also went off and drew some new stuff on their own which made me really pleased.
Next off we enter the digital realm with a demonstration of Adobe After Effects CS4. http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/ The program is used for special effects, animation and motion graphics. One strength of the computer is that it can manipulate and re-purpose artwork. Below is a video sample of some Dancing Bears done with one drawing that was first scanned in and had it’s background removed in Photoshop (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/)and then using the puppet tool in After Effects. Then there is a Mysterious Man walking and Spaceships done with the digital version of cut-out animation.
Many of the same effects can be done in other programs like Adobe Flash, but After Effects handles the bitmaps better and is a lot more powerful even with a bit more of a learning curve. I also love the manipulation of flat layers in 3D space to get a ‘multiplane’ effect.
This is the same way they do the Motion Comics, which was one of my inspirations for this class. Artwork being re-purposed for animation.
Last we needed to come up with a simple idea for a short piece of animation in which the students would draw the art which would be brought into the computer and manipulated creating a whole story. After the class agreed to some story elements, everyone sat down to work on some drawings of what characters would look like. The drawings were placed up on the board and assistant artist Chris Conroy and I combined ideas into final designs.
The final result was always planned to be more of a motion comic, but with the art being created specifically for animating. To speed things up I roughed out a simple storyboard and the students worked on making the art which was scanned after class and prepared to be structured into an animation. A big thank to Graham Wong for his help on Friday working in After Effects to animate the drawings and having some of the students assist him.
The voice of the Nanny Ninja is Heather Plunkett and the lip assignments were done in JLipSync, and older java script based program. It’s a bummer since it only uses 8bit mono .WAV files which are very outdated by today’s standards, but it did still get the job done.
The student really did an amazing job of creating some fantastic art that helped tell our story. GOOD WORK GUYS!
Sadly time and technical difficulties have prevented the finished video to appear yet, but it will be finished up in the early part of July with the missing art and missing music, but a close to finished version is presented here as a Work in Progress.
Note: I also found a few drawings did not get scanned in the last rush to finish on Friday and so they will have to be replaced with something else. No art was left out except for that reason. A final version will be on-line in the next week or two with a few missing drawings, music and sound effects — but will look close to the video below.
Well, what a week it’s been. I can’t believe how great Cartoon Boot Camp at the Cartoon Art Museum is this year. Lots of new things happening and lots of new faces too. I am amazed at the skill that these young folks have.
This week was drawings Mystical Mythical Magical Beasts and it was a big challenge since we were drawing more realistic style animals.
A big shout out has to go to my support: Chris Conroy, Benjy Wachter and Nomi Kane as well as the director of the museums educational program and the staff.
I decided that the best way to show off the work of the students is a video slide show. The 11 kids did so much work and this was the best way to show it off.
I also got to create an animated intro for the slide show too, which was done with Chris Conroy. I did the 3D model, animation and compositing and Chris did a series of pencil drawings that I used as texture maps and 2D ‘cut-outs.’ The 3D work was done in Blender 3D, using the export plug-in to bring it into After Effects where the other elements were added. I am really pleased at how it came out.
The music is by Kevin MacLeod who licenses’ it for free through the Creative Commons. by http://incompetech.com/
The examples on the slide-show feature drawing exercises and challenges as well as the students final drawing of creature they invented themselves.
as a bonus here is a better version of the intro animation I produced for the slide show.
