Learnings from the first Learning Teaching Training Activity

The curriculum of the training course:

1. What exactly is Animation?

2. The essential basics of Photography

3. The art of video editing

4. The inspiration of combining the reality with the virtual world

5. Everything you need to know in order to create the perfect movie

6. Practical session

7. Presenting the materials created

   
   

I. What exactly is Animation?

- We have learned the history and main principles the art called "Animation" which consist of 12 elements:

1. Timing and spacing - This is what gives objects and characters the illusion of moving within the laws of physics

2. Squash and stretch - This is what gives flexibility to objects. Look at a bouncing ball. As the ball starts to fall and picks up speed, it will stretch out just before impact.

3. Anticipation - It is used in animation to set the audience up for an action that is about to happen.

4. Ease in and ease out - As any object moves or comes to a stop, there needs to be a time for acceleration and deceleration. 

5. Follow through and overlapping action - Follow through is the idea that separate parts of the body will continue moving after the character has come to a stop.

6. Arcs - Everything in real life typically moves in some type of arcing motion. Since it's unnatural for people to move in straight lines, you should adhere to this principle of animation to ensure you get smooth, realistic movements.

7. Exaggeration - Exaggeration is used to push movements further, adding more appeal to an action.

8. Solid drawing - In 2D animation, solid drawing is about creating an accurate drawing in terms of volume and weight, balance, shadow, and the anatomy in a pose. With 3D animation, animators need to think about how to pose out your 3D character rig to ensure there is correct balance and weight, as well as a clear silhouette.

9. Appeal - This principle can really come down to adding more appeal (charisma) in many different areas of your animation, such as in posing.

10. Straight ahead action and pose to pose - Straight ahead action is a very spontaneous and linear approach to animating and is animated from start to finish, frame by frame. With this, you’ll create each pose of the animation one after the other.

11. Secondary action - Secondary action refers to the actions that support or emphasize the main action to breathe more life into the animation and create a more convincing performance.

12. Staging - Staging is how you go about setting up your scene, from the placement of the characters, to the background and foreground elements, the character’s mood, and how the camera angle is set up. Staging is used to make the purpose of the animation unmistakably clear to the viewer.

II. The essential basics of Photography: 

• We have learned how to make the perfect picture or video. We talked about different kinds of ANGLES and what changes in the product when we experiment with them; 

• also about COMPOSITION or the art of knowing how to construct the perfect scene - what to put to the front, back, sides  top and bottom and how to align them; 

• we have also discussed LIGHT as one the key elements in photography. As we all know Photography means "drawing with light" from Greek language. So we went over the principles of how much light you should have, what type of color, in what angle, what shadows, etc.

• camera movement and the dynamics that we can create with it - what emotions does that bring to the audience and how does it affect the whole piece

• TEXT and how it changes the whole theme of the concept giving us a better understanding of the material

• VOICE ACTING as an additional of element of the quality made movie 

• SPECIAL EFFECTS and the additional features that they give to the movie
  

III. The art of video editing

We have covered some important basics of the way that one should edit the videos. We have also tried multiple softwares in order for us to be much easier to cover more details and become more experienced in less time. We have experimented with manipulations of the timeline, chaging the speed of a movie, copying and pasting different particles, deleting some parts and snapping pieces together, adding text and audio, transitioning photos in between, changing resolutions, resizing videos, etc. Resulting in creating watchable content in just a few clicks.

IV. The inspiration of combining the reality with the virtual world (making real things with our hands and implementing them in videos)

We have made a stop-motion animation from characters that we made with our bare hands. After teaching how to shoot pictures and videos and how to edit them, now it was time for us to create our content so we went on making a video with our bare hands. That way I wanted to fire a spark in their imaginations and make them work hard as animators used to back in the days. That way they work with both their hemispheres resulting in a productive work that develops us not only as artists but also as human beings. Some used plasticine, other - plastics; some used papers and others - drew everything. It was very impressive and the results were astonishing. 

V. Everything you need to know in order to create the perfect movie

We have discussed some of the top movies from the world cinema (not only American) and talked about different kinds of tricks that great directors use in their works. We have covered everything there is to be known in order to create the most ideal screen piece: plot, subject, intrigue, fabula, turning points, suspense, peripherals, retrospections, acting, screenplay, multiple story lines, costumes, decorations, music, endings, etc. We have covered the most important key points which are essential for the creation of a masterpiece.