TY Animation

Gorey Community School and Art teacher Ms. Codd had the opportunity of taking on The Creative Engagement programme for the TY animation module. This was funded by the NAPD (National Association for Principals & Deputys).
The programme strives to encourage creativity, initiative and expression in students and to complement curricular learning in the arts. This entails an artist coming into the school to work with the students and imparts their skills, knowledge and enthusiasm through the arts and where creativity is a core activity in the post primary curriculum. The idea was to explore Animation as a medium of expression in relation to the arts, and introduce to students the aspects of a filmmaking process.
Ms. Codd chose to work with Ms. Petersen who has worked in the animation and film industry for a number of years. She was very keen on getting an introduction to animation for her TY students, as the school recently have got the facility of iMac computers with the program iMovie installed on them. Creating animation by making students develop through the effective use of digital technologies, such as those associated with planning, shooting and editing stages would be the foundation of the module.

So beginning of the module, a discussion based on What is animation? Animation means “bringing to life”, and a technique that makes still objects or pictures appear to move. A history of Animation was introduced and a demonstration of the very first techniques used, like flipbook, thaumatrope and zoetrope.

The animation making process was structured for the students to work towards creating their very own short animation. It was based on creating characters with a character profile, these ideas would develop into a story. And what they was learning was “Visual storytelling”, and some students discovered that the words on paper might not always work, and instead let the visual tell and develop the story.
The shooting was done on the students mobiles, they had downloaded the Stop motion app which is an easy app to work with all facilities to create an animation film.

After a long and meticulously shooting phase with loads of re-shoots and hands in the frame, and shaking camera movements. It was editing time, the students had a introduction to editing program on the iMac. They now have to understand to “tell” their story frame by frame and cut unnecessary frames, a lot of work of cutting and re-cutting until their story had a interesting visual flow.

The last stage of their editing process was the titles, sound effect and music, always nice to see your own name on an opening sequence. Some titles were animated others were digitally created. The students really understood that sound and music brings your animation to life, and sourcing the sound effect libraries is always great fun.

Completed animation films will enter Fresh Film festival 2021, a film festival of young filmmakers aged 7 – 18 to tell their stories through the medium of moving pictures. WATCH THIS SPACE!