Forget looking at tiny dotty pictures of artwork in books and low resolution images from a Google Image search. Click over and have a look at Google Art Project. It lets you zoom right into the painting to see the tiny cracks and lets you walk around any museum in the world that’s actually worth paying a huge plane fair to go visit. Amazing. I wish they had this stuff when I was a kid…
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.
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.
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.
Every time I go on The Teaching Palette to browse and become envious of what others are doing, I often think to myself… ‘Why do I bother’?
The resource and inspiration heavy blog would make any good intentioned art teacher annoyed that they aren’t good enough or doing enough. That’s not to say that you should just give up or block the address, no… What you should do is bookmark and visit it regularly to steal and customise any of the ideas contained within. If you do, don’t hesitate to let Theresa and Hillary know, they’d really appreciate it.
This is a teaching blog for teaching blogs, it teaches the teachers, manages the management and inspires the inspiring. Don’t get mad, get even… or try and get as close as you can to its perfection.
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.
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.
Currently working with the Primary Teaching Students, they have chosen their animation ideas and are now developing those ideas into something concrete. Ms Beattie is working on the idea of a growing tree that gets destroyed through harmful human acts. The tree is a symbol for world harmony. Ms Beattie’s ideas were great, though may be too large to complete in the short time that she has. I took a little time out to animate an example of how I would tackle her animation to let her and others see that ideas can be laid down quickly and effectively. Stop animation does not necessarily have to take a long time for it to be attractive and successful.
I created this exemplar for S4′s introduction to Chalk and Charcoal techniques. The exemplar contains how to layout your drawing in charcoal (either compacted or vine), as well as the three main techniques of applying pastels; Scribbling, Smudging and Dashing. I didn’t use Scubbing, because I hate the technique and think that it ruins work rather than adds to it. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, why don’t you search ‘charcoal techniques’ on youtube.
Animation, although difficult to introduce and needing lots of time to complete, can be very successful if given the chance. It allows understanding of materials, of composition, of movement and team working, that other units cannot provide. Like all introductions to group design, it should be explored with brainstorming, mind mapping and exchanging ideas.
After the brainstorming, an idea is decided upon, then storyboards and character development is explored.
When the characters are developed, they can be made in the chosen material, scenery needs to be created and any effects that will add to the atmosphere and the feeling of the short film. After all that and 30 mins of animation, I ended up with this:
As you can see, it’s a small input to what was technically 3 hours work, though now that the elements have been made, it should be easy to carry on and finalise. This is exactly how the unit will work in class, the first few sessions will be terrible and stressful, though after pupils have their ideas and animating elements, you’ll find that you are no longer needed. You can just stand back, give some advice and admire your pupils’ great work.
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