Bouncing Ball

Our first exercise was to create an animation of a ball bouncing along the ground. We had a booklet of 32 blank pages, we were also given a booklet containing templates to help us draw the animation in the correct positions. Before we could start drawing the bouncing ball, we had to number the pages 1 to 32, after the numbering we drew the action line on page 32 we would then trace the action line onto each page, the action line is there as a guideline. As you can see my action line slants down a tiny bit each frame. After drawing the action line on to each page we had to draw the key frames, there was five key frames, this made it easier when drawing in the in between frames. I also chose to colour my ball in, i made the mistake of choosing two colours, it was a mistake as I then had to spend more time making sure the colours on the ball look like the turning around.

After drawing the ball on to each page it was time to film the animation. to do this we had a tripod set up on a table and a camera pointing down at the table, we then stuck some blue tac onto the back of our booklets to secure them too the table so the didn't move when we turned the page. The program we used to create the animation was iStopMotion, we would be using 12 frames per second, which would allow us to make the video play smooth. I took a picture of each frame carefully making sure nothing else was in the frame like my hand for example. After taking a picture of each frame we imported the clips to final cut and edited the animation so it looped 5 times. I am pleased with the outcome of my animation, I could improve on the drawing of the animation as the action line wasn't straight and it made the animation look tilted.

BLU Practitioner Study

Blu is an Argentinian.street graffiti artist who has been known for his graffiti since 1999, he started out using spray paint as there wasn't much else to use, what got Blu noticed in 1999 is his illicit graffiti which he decided to share with in the historical center and suburbs of Bolonga, the capital of Italy's Emilia-Romangna region. In 2001 Blu showed Bolonga what he was really capable of, he had moved on from spray paint, and was now using house paint and rollers mounted on tall sticks. He painted the streets of Bologna with huge human figures, with different expressions.

Blu found other people who shared his passion for graffiti street art; Dem, Sweza, Run and Ericailcane, these people would influence Blu in his early career. During the time he found these people who shared his passion he started experimenting with animation. It wasn't untill 2004 that art galleries started to notice his work, but Blue didn't like to be known so he never attended any of the shows. In 2005 Blu started travelling around the world,  painting murals in different cities, some that related to the cities background and some his own work.

Today Blu still uses animation, and there are many of his video's on YouTube, to create his animation he sraws his image, takes a photo, paints over it with grey or white paint and then draws his next frame and takes a picture and so on. This is my favourite animation from Blu: