Artist, Sponsored by the Spirit Fund, Visits Stop Motion Animation Class

The Spirit Fund supports teaching and learning at Island School. Launched in 2015 it now plays an integral role in the school’s development.
The Spirit Fund sponsored workshops lead by Animation Artist, Emily Wong for Elements class ‘Stop Motion Animation’. During her workshops she asked students to consider how the movement of animated figures should mimic the motion of real physical actions. Emily encouraged the students to do a physical action before trying to recreate it on film.

Head of Technology and Digital Literacy and teacher of the class Mark Roper explained more about the course, “We use lots of equipment, tripods and web cams for filming, light boards and basic stop motion animation software.  In terms of media we do ink and brush work, paper cut outs and some figure animation. Students carry out a number of short developmental studies then work on individual projects where they either use the media we have looked at or reach out to other software to help them develop their projects i.e. Photoshop and Illustrator.”

“It is always interesting to see how students transfer their understanding from the taught course to the more open ended section of it.  It often provokes some interesting challenges and interesting conversations around the mode of production but also, and just as importantly, about the communication intent the student has and the choices they make around that.”

“Stop motion is a practice that demands lots of diverse skills – it is a fusion of technical media skills such as camerawork and lighting, craft skills for building props and characters etc. an appreciation of physics and then the artistry of the actual animation process”.

“With Emily the class talked about the principles of animation such as easing, exaggeration, arcs of motion etc.  Importantly students got the opportunity to be taught by someone with an immense insight and professional experience of this unique art form.”

Click here to see some of the work produced by the Stop Motion Animation class

Click here to see Emily Wong’s animation studio Dodo Animation