Sunday, July 07, 2013

Storyboard Pro training at Lupus Films

I was very excited, a little nervous and rather honoured to be asked by ToonBoom to teach Storyboard Pro to Frank Gladstones storyboard students at Lupus Films a few days ago.  Frank was my story mentor at Aardman Animations 5 years ago and was tickled pink to be in the same room with one of the worlds true great animation tutors.

Lupus Films and Creative Skillset teamed up to provide an excellent FREE training opportunity for storyboard artists.  They are running two courses – an intensive four week program for experienced professionals, and also a one day introduction to storyboarding. The last masterclass is this coming Saturday in London. If tickets are still available, go, go, go!


And we're off! My POV at Lupus Films of Frank Gladstone's (far right) very talented storyboard students. They all learnt storyboard pro today and produced a short storyboard, which they pitched. A great group.

Official... "Better than the X-box"!


My blogging has a lot to be desired. Especially as there's been such a lot of great things to report...
so here's a quick catch up...

2) Zoetrope Animation workshops at Cannon Hall


I love inventing animation workshops from museums collections and last month I was given the opportunity to do just that at Cannon Hall Museum and Gardens, a country house museum set in 70 acres of historic parkland. It doesn’t take much to get me excited about animation and museums, but this workshop was a real highlight of my year and a very special workshop.

Funded by the Arts Council, a huge number of school children will be invited into the museum over the next 2 years to discover the beautiful collections and practice all manor of creative arts.

I hunted around the museum for a day, looking for inspiration for a 2 hour animation workshop. I found my inspiration in a glass bowl, which on close inspection, I discovered featured a running lioness and cub. Could it be this was an example of sequential animation, actually in the museums collection? I got very excited about this and we arranged for a photographer to come and photograph each engraving. I then took those images into an edit to covert them into a movie. And gosh, is it breathtaking. Here’s a video of the animation.

Now, not only is this utterly AMAZING, but it reminded me of one of the earliest examples of animation, depicted on a 2000 year old Iranian clay pot. And of course it reminded me of the Zoetrope.

So being utterly spoilt, we were able to create a really exciting Zoetrope workshop with a historical and scientific underpinning.

In an age of technological innovation and ipads, traditional hand made workshops are sometimes forgotten, and doing these pilots, using cardboard, paper plates and a pencil, made me remember that good old hands on invention can’t be beaten. And that’s not a 30 something fuddy duddy talking. That’s the children. My quote of the week came from a child who simply wrote – Better than the xbox!

Look out for examples from the zoetrope pilot workshops at Barnselys new city museum this summer. 




The Energy Show

My blogging has a lot to be desired. Especially as there's been such a lot of great things to report...
so here's a quick catch up...

1) "The Energy Show" - The Science Museum

In June I was invited to join the animation team, headed by theatre designer and director Nina Dunn to stroryboard on animation scenes for the Science Museums big summer live family event spectacular, The Energy Show. I was also invited to contribute animation ideas and do a script pass - which was a whole lot of fun. Here's me sat in the garden 'working' hard on the script. Can you see the pressure? Fortunately refreshments were supplied by little Lottie to keep the creative juices flowing. (below). Catch the Energy Show at the Science Museum in London, 22 July - 31 August.