Advanced Projects
I wanted to share some of the projects that my Animation Production students have been working on. This is a full year class. Each quarter we focus on a different animation tool (Flash, Maya, After Effects, Roto Scope). Students that take the class twice specialize on thier area of expertise. All students develop an impressive portfolio by the time they leave the class.
Rotoscope
Rotoscope is the process of turning video into an animation. This year we participated in "Rotoball 2009" an international rotoscope project. We started by video taping each student against a solid color background. They either pretended to or really caught a ball, did something with it for 15 seconds and threw it away. Next we imported the video into Flash and locked the video layer. Then we added a layer and traced the video frame by frame. Some students had time to add an interesteding background. Then we deleted the video layer. It can be a little tedious so you might want to plan some breaks into your schedule. We will be sending our projects into the international project to be combined into one huge rotoscope!
Examples: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight
This project earned us an Award of Excellence at the 2009 Northwest High School Film Festival.
Group Project
We were working on team working skills so my class decided to split into three groups. Two decided to focus on spoofing a couple good natured teachers and one group took up the theme of pollution. Here are the projects that resulted.
Examples: Adventures of Goldhammer | Adventures of Dockery | A Forbidden Prosperity