First Animations

Way back in January during our first day in school, when we met year 5 for the first time (it seems like ages ago) everyone learnt how to animate… We’ve found these old animations and thought it would be nice to add them to the blog. Scenes of nature, farmers and seasons – not bad for your first try at animating!
We think they’re great, and hope to use some of them in the final film… They also show how much better you all got at animating over the time we worked with you – so well done!

Ice Age Art

Searching through ALL of the animations has been quite a task! There’s just so much…

Here’s something that some of you might remember from one of our very first days in school.

Brass Band

Here’s another fun little bit of animation from our most recent day in school… Brass band instruments swirl and dance against a musical backdrop!

Down on the Farm

It’s been a while since we updated the blog – but now the project is drawing to a close it’s about time we added some stuff. There is loads of it that’s for sure! You’ve all made so much animation, it’s a struggle to keep up!

Most recently Year 5 got stuck into the task of finishing off animating the different stages of Creswell’s history! They did brilliantly – some of them used a multi-plane camera set up for animating farming scenes, whilst others worked on brass band instruments, sound recording poetry and sound effects, futuristic swirling planets, and more…

For the time being we’ve uploaded this:

There’ll be much, much more added soon, please keep checking back to see it all…

workin with carley and martin!

it was great creating things for the
future!
from chloe

the future

in class 5 we have been doing about the future and the past of creswell in future i made a giant and i kileed evryone the end from kieren

the future of creswell

hi its me shannon i loved doing things about the future of creswell it was ace i loved all the clay people

Hello, its me again

Last June I worked with children from Creswell Juniors, Creswell Infants and some other local schools as well as local adults including mums&dads, teachers and the local history group to get ideas for a stone carving I shall be making for Creswell.

We visited the Crags, looked at Warli art (Indian paintings that had recently been on exhibition at the Harley gallery based on communities and simple shapes) and talked about Creswell people from the past and the present.

Let me show you some of the 1st designs that came from the workshops- my favourites were based on trees.

I spoke with local people who said that although mining and mammoths are what Creswell is well known for they are not the only important things to Creswell.  I was told about farmers, brass bands, evacuees, dog walking, Scottish and Welsh miners moving in to help in the mines, rare flowers, the model village, bird spotting, an iron age hill fort, new residents from Poland, a Neolithic skull and the list went on.

I thought the tree idea was a really great way of showing the growth of Creswell through the ages so I started doing some sketches myself, inspired by ideas from the workshops.

I looked at a map of Creswell and realised that when viewed from above the road and train track grow like a tree trunk and then seperate out like branches – so I used this basic shape for my tree.

I saw this profile of a face in the Crags one day

I also realised that the branches of the tree look like a brain so I have put the tree inside a head on my design.  My design grew and the Crags and the model village have become like parts of the body.

My design (you have to imagine it folded down along the vertical lines to make an upright 4 sided stone carving)

I showed my design to the Creswell Town Council who were very happy with the ideas and have asked me to take it further.

I would like to include lots of small figures based on Warli artwork within my final sculpture.  So I have been back to Creswell Juniors where the children have helped with some really good designs of Creswell people past and present

I am working with these now and will show you my newest designs soon.

Amanda

Plasticine Prehistory

After animating miners in the morning – Class 4 started work on ice-age characters for the part of the film that takes place 10,000 years ago. Each different time period of the film will have a different visual style, hopefully this will work out!

We started out by twisting wire into armatures (another word for structure or framework) – this just helps the model keep its shape when it comes to animating it. Next, everyone built up the shapes with newspaper and masking tape. After that it was a simple matter to add the detail with coloured plasticine. These should look great when they’re moving…

Everyone did an amazing job! But the models aren’t quite finished yet – the clothes need a little work and there will have to be more animals, and we still have to build caves, trees and landscapes too.

Animating Underground

So, this week we started animating the mining scenes – all the things that were made at school last time were brought to life.

We used big translucent screens to show the shadows of the puppets – the result hopefully feels like the dark, flickering, shadowy world that miners 100 years ago might have experienced. For the effect to work we had to animate with all the lights off and the blinds all drawn, and we would have liked to make it darker still!

Here are the first results!