Research and My Plan to complete Silver Arts Award

Research and My Plan to complete Silver Arts Award

• What I would like to set myself as a challenge for my Silver Arts Award 

The challenge I set myself is to make a 10 minute story animation film with my own audio,  special effects, and voice over acting and starting by planning out this animation with a beginning, a middle and an end to the storyline on paper storyboarding to show process.

Now it is time to do a little research. 

Can you find some events to attend? 

And do some research on your prospective teacher. 

Make sure you summarise any research in a few paragraphs - just to prove you have read and considered the information; and add the website links of any research to the summary.  Send this work to me by email.

AND, Use this research to answer the question:

What are your plans? 

My Research:

To improve my storytelling abilities I would like to get a chance to meet a famous author or animator to learn from their experiences.

I think it would help me to understand how writing and storytelling can be turned into successful animations.

I have researched to see what events are available and found an exhibition on Rodney Peppé which I hope to attend. 

I also found some interesting workshops with professional animators at the Samsung Digital Studio of the British museum that I hope to be able to get to. They are run by professional animators and will give me a chance to peek at the workings of making animations commercially.

There is also lot to be learned from animation and storytelling of older times, and I want to research older forms of storytelling and animation to see if there are any useful tips that I could pick up that may have been forgotten. I think lots of information on the history of filmmaking and storytelling can be found in the following museums: The Cartoon Museum London, the Science Museum London and the Museum of Childhood London.

The highlight of my plan to complete my Arts Award Challenge will be a visit to the Animation Gallery of the National Media Museum in Bradford.

this would be the highlight of my arts award because this is an entire museum section dedicated to animation and i could learn a very large amount from everything in there also this is the only one of these it Britain.

There are also several online learning places I have researched that do workshops and have specific tutorials that will be useful to me. I have included links in my plan. 

Links to Research events

Rodney Peppe Exhibition

http://www.ruthincraftcentre.org.uk/exhibitions/rodney-peppe-2/

Samsung Digital Studio Workshops

http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/events_calendar/event_detail.aspx?eventId=321&title=Greeks%20alive!%20animation%20workshop&eventType=Digital%20workshop

The Cartoon Museum London

- interesting story boards and views into the work in progress stages of comics
http://www.cartoonmuseum.org

Science Museum London

- History of Filmmaking / Animation

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

National Media Museum Bradford

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/PlanAVisit/ExploreOurGalleries/AnimationGallery.aspx

 My Plan: 

To help me complete my Arts Award I have researched the following events and workshops to attend as well as online learning resources that will help me complete my goal. 

EVENTS TO ATTEND

Learning from a successful cartoonist, author and storyteller 

• I am hoping to attend an exhibition about Rodney Peppé
• He is a cartoonist, author and automaton maker that had some of his stories turned into animations
• I am hoping to get a chance to meet and interview him and learn about his methods of illustration and character design  inspiration to help me with my own storytelling and storyboarding.

http://www.galleryoldham.org.uk/exhibitions/rodney_peppe.htm

Learning from a professional Animation Teacher

• learning from professional animators at the Samsung Digital Studio at the British Museum London 
• I am hoping to attend a workshop on stop motion animation using digital recording software. 
• learning about storytelling , animation processes and digital design

http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/events_calendar/event_detail.aspx?eventId=321&title=Greeks%20alive!%20animation%20workshop&eventType=Digital%20workshop

Trip to National Media Museum 

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk

• The highlight of my plan to complete my Arts Award Challenge will be a visit to the Animation Gallery of the National Media Museum in Bradford 
• http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/PlanAVisit/ExploreOurGalleries/AnimationGallery.aspx
• looking at some of the British Animators work and getting a change to study their story boarding methods  in the section where they outline the animation process from original idea to the final film, through script, storyboards, style sheets and bar breakdowns, and show you how animators create moving images using cel, model and computer animation. 

here a bit from the intro on the website " 

" The Animation Gallery explores the history of animation and animated images, with an emphasis on animation produced in Britain. One can see character design explore hands on activity sections, look back at animation through the ages and discover how animators bring drawings and objects to life." 

The Cartoon Museum London

• I want to visit the cartoon museum to learn more about interesting story boards and views into the work in progress stages of comics. Also its full of cartoons done a long time ago so it would be interesting to study them and learn from older cartoonists work. 

http://www.cartoonmuseum.org

Science Museum London

• I want to look into the history of animation and filmmaking.  Also to see older methods of animation and sound recording and to see if those methods can be adapted to be used today. 
• History of Filmmaking / Animation

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

Museum of Childhood London

• The museum of Childhood displays toys from a long time ago, i want to see if there are any toys that children used to use to view animations, i know there is one there a Victorian animation spinning wheel. Also how children from older time periods enjoyed plays and theatre, and some of the literature of the time.

Trip to Harry Potter Studio Tour 

• Learn about Special Effects and SFX Sound in creating of Harry Potter Movies for Ideas on how to apply sound effects to movies 
• http://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk

Trip to British Film Institute Library 

• if I get a chance I'd like to visit the BFI film library where one can view famous cartoon storyboards and all kinds of literature about past animation and animators that were turned into films for inspiration

http://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/bfi-reuben-library

 ONLINE LEARNING 

• To help me complete my challenge  i need to learn more about storyboarding, sound recording and animation, i found the following places online to learn more about these subjects. 

• LYNDA Online Digital Learning 

http://www.lynda.com/Animation-tutorials/Animating-Characters-Toon-Boom-Animate/106928-2.html 

This course is an introduction to creating and animating cutout characters in Toon Boom Animate. Author Tony Ross shows how to use the Toon Boom toolset to create cutout characters, and explains how to leverage a few rules of traditional animation to help bring the characters to life. He shows how to create mouth shapes for dialogue, add realistic eye movement, and animate a full cycle. The final chapter shows how to create foreground and backgrounds for your character and export a simple, animated scene.

• Youtube Teacher Jon Taylors Toonboom Animate Tutorials

this is a newer version of the software I am using that helps me to learn more about the features available to will help me complete my challenge

http://www.youtube.com/user/mrjontaylor/videos

• Computer Arts Tutorials

here are some general tutorials I will watch that help with converting longer story illustration into animation 

From Illustration to Animation

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/features/moving-illustration-animation

Character Design Tutorials
here I hope to learn more about successful character design that is easy to animate

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/14-brilliant-character-design-tutorials

• Sound and Sound effects

I am hoping to find out more about soundeffects, recording  and copyright free music to use in my animations 

http://audiojungle.net/item/determination/724955?WT.ac=free_file&WT.seg_1=free_file&WT.z_author=CraigHall

Learn more about using digital recording software available as apps on thh iphone to alter voiceovers 
VOICE PLUS APP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oq-ashQZhE
VOICE RECORD PRO
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/voice-record-pro/id546983235?mt=8

COMPARE VOICE RECORDING APPS

http://lifehacker.com/5879232/the-best-voice-recording-app-for-iphone

PEOPLE WHO INSPIRE ME 
 research on your prospective teacher. 

There are several people online who inspire me and my art. I hope to study more of their art work to learn variations in animation and more complex animation reels.  The anatomy that TheDetrah uses is outstanding and i could really learn a lot from her. SplashKittyArtist's lip sync style is amazing and i'd like to try out some of the techniques she uses for lip sync.  IcyKittinProductions' bouncy animation style inspires me because i love animations that use that kind of movement. 

• Splash Kitty Artist ( http://www.youtube.com/user/SplashKittyArtist ) 
• TheDetrah ( http://www.youtube.com/user/TheDetrah ) 
• Icy Kittin Productions ( http://www.youtube.com/user/IcyKittinProductions ) 

I am hoping to learn by observing their methods, asking questions about their animation software, watching tutorials they have made and asking questions directly. 

Summery of Plan 

Once I have studied and gotten inspiration from these sources I'm hoping to know enough to make an interesting ten minute long animation with my own audio, sound effects and using my original cartoon characters.