Snow Day

With all the chaos that’s been going on at the minute with the snowy weather and school closures, I was able to get the chance to catch up on reading my emails. I’m glad I did because I was instantly cheered up when I read a reply sent to me from Ruth W. Her Mum had been teaching an Art Project to a P5 section and had asked some advice on running the unit. I had suggested using some tracing paper to build depth and use of black and white paper to sustain contrasts, but I’d never thought I’d see such great examples as the ones attached to the email.

I believe that the works are to be framed, the multi-layered collages will make the picture look deeper and therefore, much more intriguing to view. I’m so happy that my small amounts of advice lead to such great outcomes.

Brave The Waves

Three of my S1 classes were involved in a Cutty Sark transitional project with Our Lady & St Pat’s High School as primary pupils. When they arrived to me as new S1 pupils in the school, I decided to take their investigation drawings and have them make small collages for a short film. Pupils recorded thoughts on moving into secondary school, the fears, the expectations and these were edited (along with sound effects) into the final slide show film.

Cutty Sark

S1 (aged 11-12) are working on a transitional piece of work which they started in P7 and will complete in S1 this week. The unit is to make the movement from primary school into secondary school more fluid. In their visit to secondary school as primary pupils they had made initial abstract drawings based on the masts and roping of the Cutty Sark. They are now developing their initial drawings to make a collage of mixed materials that will form the cover of their transitional book and a short film.

Above Kyle D, Charlotte M and Clare S work on their Cutty Sark backgrounds. After this is completed they will finish the work with a porthole frame.

4 Film About WWII

Below is the final edit for the four group films created in St Paul’s Primary School. The films were created over four weeks by four groups with three-four pupils in each group. Each group was supervised by Teaching Students from Glasgow University.

Teacher Exemplars For Animation Design Unit About WWII

Below you will find some examples of the design sheets created for the animation unit themed on WWII. Created by Primary Teaching Students from Glasgow University, the sheets are a great example of the hard work that teacher’s have to put into every art unit they create. Photographs are taken while the exemplars were on display in Glasgow University/St Andrews Building.

The Destruction Of The Poppies

This week’s ‘Artwork of the Week’ is not from a secondary school pupil or even a teacher, in fact, it’s from three primary school pupils. Josh K, Bismah H and John M (P7 from St Paul’s) have been working on their stop animation set and characters based around WWII and the ‘folly’ of war. The idea involves a stomping Hitler bringing destruction to a beautiful field. Hitler will walk across the landscape changing it from green fields and blue skies to rubble and dust.

The P7 A & B classes have been working on creating posters and short films that reflect upon the war as well as teach us a lesson to never let it happen again. It’s a great project to be involved in.

The Primary Teachers have brought their animations and their assistance to St Paul’s to let the pupils have a try at making and editing a short, and looking at some of the sets and characters, they could well better their teachers’ attempt.

Wait No Longer

This week’s Artwork of the Week comes from a Primary Teaching Student at the University of Glasgow. Miss Quigley created the short animation below at home. This gritty and quite realistic animation was shot using a Sony digital camera, then the photos were processed through iStop Motion, with sounds and editing completed in iMovie.

The short focuses on the people who are left behind after war, it shows us that it is not just those that are involved in the war, but those connected, who feel a greater impact through hurt and loss. The figure of the lead woman waiting on her loved one is extremely successful, her clothes look of the period and flow and move realistically, her proportions are more real than that usually seen in animations and she reacts well within the scenery, with the lighting and with each prop.

A beautifully created masterpiece with visuals and emotions that stay with you long after the film has finished.

WWII Animations – Week 4

Here is the newest finished shorts from the Primary Teaching Students at Glasgow University. I am so happy with how these are turning out, they’ve done an absolutely fantastic job.

Warmonger

Assisting Primary School Teaching Students through their design unit, I was asked to fulfill the brief of not only creating a short stop animation, but also designing a poster portraying the folly of war.

I had come up with several ideas centering around the idea of ‘your country needs you’ etc, though I was really interested in Russian propaganda posters and also portraying actual facts. My idea was to show that the scale of wars was getting larger and more incomprehensible as we move forward. Technology and military progression has meant that war has become ridiculously easy.

After researching the death count that occurred in each of the World Wars, I had decided that I was going to create a disturbing bar chart made with human bodies, though an idea popped into my head; are the size of weapons relevant to the amount of casualties or deaths that were produced?

Below you will see the final production for my ‘folly of war’ poster design.

WWII Animations – Week 3

The Primary School Teaching students have been continuing to develop their ideas and are experimenting with the possibilities of animation and the software iStop Motion. After an intense three hour session on Wednesday, most of the teachers had animated part of their short. The collection above includes a few of these videos, some of which, have been post edited by myself to increase their drama and impact.