June/July 2007

Phenomenal beginnings!

What a way to begin our adventure as we engaged the profound amount of work that this project will require. Students from numerous states and school districts participated in what promises to be a wonderful collaborative experience. This MIAD pre-college animation course and the animation that they created will serve as the foundation for Project Identity, as next summers class will appropriately become its’ capstone. All of the fieldwork for this collaboration that occurs between these two summer classes will become the body, the matter and the substance of the entire investigation.

The students embraced David Martin’s writing prompts, and from the writing became directed as they began to translate their ideas into personal videos. With the help of my Teaching Assistants (Anne & Ilana) we quickly transposed the files and got the students immerged into the wonderful world of rotoscoping.

Through the duration of our month together this intense group of animators created over 4,500 drawings for the final animation. We also had them independently doing their own work, shooting and editing their own files – encouraging them to become responsible and devoted to their research.Guest artist Jim Cogan blew their minds away with the importance of audio, giving them invaluable techniques in capturing, manipulating and creating supportive music files for the final work.

Finally, on a global level the group made an internet ‘shout-out’ to the collaborative Japanese animation troop known as RinpaEshidan. We broadcast our exquisite corpse animation to them via youtube, and within the week they economically responded back to us: respect.

Bringing it to life,

James B.

James Barany
Associate Professor of Foundations
MIAD
jbarany@miad.edu