SMFA Animation Integration class

We had some fun and interesting assignments come out of a recent Animation Integration class. The goal of the course is to investigate "animation" as having other opportunities for invention, rather than being solely a cinematic, filmmaking-based medium and discipline. We investigate historical and contemporary developments, as well as ways to incorporate animation into other disciplines and practices.

Here are a few results from our first go around, as people are responding to early optical toys, and the idea of animation as something that we can engage with using our physical bodies. The "flipbook" was the base for many of these experiments.

Amelia's "Cat Ghost" experiment uses ideas of successively linked images, light, projection, and animation as object (the poster board,) body interaction and the paper strip coming from early optical toys, obviously leading to the film strip vertical orientation.



Andrew's sculptural penis-like flipbook flipper puppet uses body interaction, sculptural form and the flipbook as it's foundations.



Gaia's performance took on the idea of "flip" as she flips her sequential t-shirt drawings up and over. The reflexive imagery is doubled by her own body performing the action.




Rachel created a "private pocket flipbook," using the flipbook more literally, but challenging the context of how we use flipbooks in relation to our own body, as individual users and its relation to viewing animation socially / privately.




Ivette created a group interactive action using the flipbook as people. We all had one of a series of animation drawings paced onto our hands, layered our hands and then pulled them away, progressively revealing the litle creature falling away into space.








Christina experimented with the idea of the looping function found in toys such as the zoetrope and phenakistoscope.


Ryan explored possibility of engaging multiple flipbooks at once, having them combine to create a common image in randomized orders.