April 2012
1 post
Art and Memories
The work with puppets and backgrounds has finally been edited. The final session at St Sids had the children working on Indian dance. They then designed masks and backgrounds to make a small stage to perform on. This was a lot of fun for everyone, and you could see the development of the children from their control of puppets to holding up the masks. Developing their creative play skills into more...
March 2012
11 posts
Puppets 'R' Us
On Friday we carried on with our backgrounds at West Exe, with Tamsin Pender doing some lovely work with paints. At the same time we also started to work on puppets with the children, so that they could be combined with their backgrounds to animate their memories. The photo below shows one of the children moving a puppet of him and his dad, while they take a walk, on top of the painting he created...
Japanese Art
We have been working this week on art inspired by Japanese printing and illustration. Continuing our puppet theme at St Sids, we have been making fish that will be jumping in and out of huge waves that we also have made. There were some interesting results, especially for the growth of the participants. There ability to move a puppet and understand that this needs to be something which is done...
Backgrounds
This week at West Ex children’s centre we broke down our ‘memories’ idea to work on it piece by piece. It is quite a small group there and they are less used to this more focussed work. Lizzie has been working really well to engage the families in movement and dance exploring places that the children like to go, ending in a fantastic under the sea exploration with beautiful...
Lots of Energy
On Friday we finished off the animation about Solar energy that was sponsored by Ekland. It was such a fun session, with the children and families making puppets of themselves to live in the houses they had created the previous week. This type of focussed work is difficult for the families, especially when we are aware that there is a message based, final piece that needs to be finished. The...
Memories
We are working at West-Exe Children’s Centre putting together some work on Memories. Through movement, puppetry and visual arts we are hoping to engage the children in thinking about times they have spent with their parents or carers. The group is very young and animation would be quite difficult for them. Filming is also tricky at this type of drop in session, and so we are focusing around...
Going Solar
Started back at our regular St Sidwell’s sessions on a Friday, with an exciting opportunity to make an animation about renewable energy. The lovely people at Ekland Solar have donated some money to fund our sessions, and this has given us a chance to do some further themed animation work. The families spent there time this week preparing much of the materials that would be needed to make an...
February 2012
1 post
Shadow Play
We completed our final session at West Exe Children’s Centre this week, rounding up our work with the participants on shadows. The children have really developed their understanding of shadows quite significantly. Playing with light and props, they were starting to control their shadows - adding to them to change their shape and size by use of cardboard and their distance from the light...
January 2012
4 posts
Replacement Bugs
Back at the Whipton Children’s Centres’ ‘Stay and Play’ session, we have been working on Bugs again but this time taking the animation and film work forward. With Kate Mitchell, the children have been working on backgrounds and puppets to be used to create a little film. It has been great working collaboratively on this model, as the children have been getting a much more...
Shadows At West Exe
Over the last three weeks we have been working with Tamsin Pender at West Exe Children’s Centre developing a creative approach to exploring Shadows. For this age group, the recognition of what shadow is and how it works is really difficult. It has been through a slow process of creative play that they have been able to start to acknowledge, explore and control their shadows in some way....
St. Sidwell's Family Sessions
New for 2012, we have just starting working with families at a session run in the St Sidwell’s Centre. This is our first central Exeter session that is run outside of a Children’s Centre, and the response has been great. Over the first 2 weeks we have been looking at ‘Family’ and ‘Support Networks’. The great thing about this session is that it is a support...
Crazy Faces
It’s been a while, but we want to say a little bit about, and show you, the final film done at West Exe Children’s Centre in collaboration with Double Elephant Print Workshop and Tamsin Pender. At the final session, we worked on some other layers of faces using plasticine and other items to animate moving facial features. This took the children even further than we had done before and...
December 2011
2 posts
Cooking With Carousel
Over the past few weeks we have been attending the regular, bi-weekly ‘Father’s Group’ sessions run by Steve Bowers. These have revolved mainly around cooking, fires and tea, and have been great fun to participate in. Over the period of two sessions we have decided to work with the participants and make a cooking show - Episodes 1 and 2. The first week they focused on making...
The Old Lady and The Birds
The final performance of our puppet piece happened at Stoke Canon, facilitated by Kevin Cotter, and we filmed this so we could make our small film about the Old Lady. The process of this was intriguing, with the children sitting quietly, watching and waiting their turn to show their work. There was also an amazing moment of 8 or so children all using their puppet at once - thereby working...
November 2011
7 posts
The Story of the Old Lady
Working again with Kevin Cotter and Lizzie Swinford, we have been continuing to develop the story of the Old Lady and the Birds. Today the participants were animating clouds that will be sitting underneath the final film, to give some depth to it. The children working with me on this had to be quite controlled to keep the cloud movement as even as possible, a challenge which they rose to as the...
Puppetry And Animation
Over the next three weeks, we are working in Stoke Canon with Kevin Cotter and Lizzie Swinford on developing a story about an old lady and her birds. We are looking at how animation and film can support the shadow puppetry and drama/movement work that is happening. The journey of the young people through story is so important, as it gives depth to their activity and makes it more meaningful for...
The Whipton Tree
During this half term, we have each worked at the Whipton sessions for two weeks on the shared theme of ‘Tree of Life’. This topic has been inspired by the Klimt painting and we have been trying to create a similar aesthetic through the animation, as the other artists have been working towards a frieze that will be hung at the Children’s centre. Here is the result of what we have...
The People and Faces of West Exe
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been working on a collaborative workshops at West Exe children’s centre with visual artist Tamsin Pender and printmaker Suzanne Ross from Double Elephant Print Workshop. These collaborative sessions create amazing results and the process for the young people involved is so much richer and fulfilling, for both the participants and us as artists. As...
October 2011
22 posts
The Final Animations
The animations that we have worked on over the last few weeks have been an attempt to try some new models and develop some of the older ones we already have. This has been interesting in new spaces as we have had different participants and different themes. This was also challenging due to only having two weeks to work on the animations rather than a full three weeks. This has an effect on the...
More Foam Monsters
We were back in Ladysmith this week, for our final session working with Scott on the Monster animations. We have also been building up the background kaleidoscope for behind the monsters that we hope will help to bring them alive. The work that Scott does is so great for animation and we hope we can build this work up, adding characteristics and personalities to the monsters in the future.
We are...
Still More Bugs..
Had our second and final week at Whipton this week, continuing the theme of bugs. We divided up into flying bugs and crawling bugs again. We looked at using the dragonflies that were being made by Carol and Sonia, and animating them on the lightbox, which enables the participants to go on a complete journey. Although this doesn’t have the clarity of the 2D cut outs, it’s great for the...
Allotment Veg
Our final session, this term, at Beacon Heath allowed us to get everything we needed to finish the layers of the ‘allotment’ animation. Working with the participants we animated pumpkins, onions and spinach as Kevin Cotter made pumpkin soup. It was interesting looking at the vegetables, as some of the real veg was being used to make soup. It really helps the participants understand...
A Bug Hunt
On Wednesday we went on our second field trip to Killerton with the Whipton group. The focus of the day was a bug hunt and an exploration of some of the grounds. It is great to see the families getting to grips with exploring outside and focusing on finding and catching bugs in the surrounding environment. We also had a lot of fun dressing up as bats and doing some singing and movement, with Sonja...
Apple Juice Anyone?
This week we have been out on a field trip to Killerton, pressing apples for juice. Such a lovely day and great to have a morning out. The families really enjoyed themselves and got a lot out of the day. We took the blue screen so we could do some interesting apple pixelation to add to our growing animation. We also took the H1 sound recorder and got some atmospheric sounds to overlay over our...
Animating Foam Characters
We are working with Scott at the Ladysmith sessions to create some fun animations with foam characters. Using replacement animation we are looking at making the participants foam creatures come to life. We have also been animating on the lightbox to make a swirling, colourful background for the characters to live on. This is a brand new model for us, and this always comes about when having...
Bugs, Bugs and more Bugs
We had a lovely session at the Whipton Children’s Centre this week. Surrounded by beautiful artwork made with the centre by the amazing Ruth Oakley, we were working with the participants to create an animation around the theme of Bugs. As with all the sessions, so far, we are trying to build the work up over 3 weeks and put it all together as a single animation. Using techniques from the...
Growing Vegetables
It was our first session at Beacon Heath Children’s Centre this week, and we are working on an animation about the allotment. Using similar techniques as the Wildlife Garden sessions, we have been drawing and animating the mud and are creating layers of veg that spring from the ground. We had some amazing experiences with some of the very young children who go to the centre - a boy of under...
September 2011
27 posts
Our First Three Pieces
The growth from our test models over the summer has only really become overt to us now we have seen the final pieces. Layering animation on animation has replicated our puppet work from the earlier taster sessions this summer, and could only be achieved by having more time with the groups over a period of a few weeks.
Animating with under 5’s has been interesting, as we have, technically,...
