Dubrovina/Currie CAPE 2023-24 Planning Form

class overview

Describe your class' art mediums, academic content, and SEL.

Our class is focused on stop motion, digital animation, analog film drawing. SEL: building connection with one another. Allowing students to discuss things with one another, teach each other and provide constructive feedback. Sharing ideas, leading discussions, building empathy for one another and each others ideas.

Semester 1

How has your Planning Form (Big Idea/ Inquiry Question) [embedded above] changed in the classroom so far this year? What have students added to the inquiry?

Connectedness is our big idea. Allowing room to swap roles while working together. Allowing room for projects to change based on students needs. Developing a sense of community and having students define what means to them. In practice, we have done some group animation projects where students add on to each other's projects through exquisite corpse, and have had students take pictures and build props in collaboration to complete a final product.

What are the specific school needs identified by your group in the December PD? How will you use the class’ Big Idea/ Inquiry Question/ Artmaking Practice to address them? Please be as specific as possible.

We find that the students who have joined like to create on their own. In our CAPE class, we provide an open and collaborative environment where students are free to explore with ideas, materials and each other. For one project, students created story ingredients individually and would pick 4 at random to combine into a complete idea they would storyboard and animate together.

With the stop motion process, it can take a long time to finish a project and students can get discouraged and want to quit. We show examples of professionals in the medium so students can be inspired to create their own interpretation.

Our goal is to have our students show their projects in the community that expand outside of the school.

Below, share photos and/or videos of select class activities. Specify what students are engaging with and learning (artistically, academically, and/or SEL), in reference to your Big Idea/ Inquiry Question. You may add different blocks from the right-hand side menu.

Drawing on film.mp4

Drawing on FIlm

Students had a lot of fun learning about animation through drawing on film. They worked on individual projects as well as group drawings. This process helped to understand the timing and pacing of animation, especially when working on a team with different ideas. We also drew on the film together as it was moving through the projector. This was a way to connect with one another in the beginning of the semester.

stop_motion.mp4

Stop Motion

After drawing on film, we transitioned to telling stories with stop motion. Students both worked on individual and group projects. During group projects, students would take turns creating props and taking pictures. This connected both forms and allowed students to take leading and supporting roles in a team.

As a side project, we had students create an exquisite corpse. This created a greater sense of community and allowed students to open up as a team as we moved into procreate.

Digital_drawing.mp4

Digital Drawing

Students learned how to work in an animation program called Procreate. They worked on learning this app before working on a collaborative story. A character species was developed that was used in the collaborative story - The Miace. Seeing the class build on itself as we moved through the projects was exciting.

SEMESTER 2

How did students respond to their involvement in the Perspective(s) exhibition? This may include: artmaking, curation, visiting CAPE Family Days or Teen Night, discussing their experience, or other.

They were nervous at first to show their work in an exhibition but ultimately were excited to show their work to their parents and friends. One student, Elijah even spoke about his experience with animation during the Perspectives opening. He said he "loved the whole process" of animating. Some had visited the exhibition and were proud to show their parents their work. While we were still working on our project, they liked the idea of presenting the storyboards and the video. We wanted to show the amount of work and planning it took to build the animation.

What skills did students leave your class with?

Animation

Storyboarding - breaking down an action through drawing.
Managing work-time (not spending too much time on one frame since you need a lot of frames to show movement)
Adjusting timing - learning how many frames are needed for the animation to “flow” and “transform”.
Working with a team on one project and compromising on decisions together.
Creating sound effects for the animation. Recording sound and also creating music on the computer.
Composition and camera shots in all the animation projects.

Photo Collage

Using the constraints of photographing one object or one area to create a single image by using many photographs.
Combining photographs with drawings as a way to “extend” the collage.

Mosaic

Using cut-up pieces of paper to form a 2D creature from a previous project. They learned how to give up a bit of control.
Problem solving and compromise. One student was overlapping a lot of pieces of paper to create the collage. We had talked about a compromise where he would limit overlapping, but wouldn’t need to complete the whole page.

SEL

Students shared feedback about their progress and we able to listen to one another and implement the feedback. They also offered advice to one another if the project seemed difficult for one student, but not the other. They also presented their group animation to another CAPE class and answered questions by younger students.

Show evidence of this learning through photos and/or videos of select class activities. Specify what students are engaging with and learning (artistically, academically, and/or SEL), in reference to your Big Idea/ Inquiry Question. You may add different blocks from the right-hand side menu.

Group ANimation

Collaboration

Students were sharing the in-progress animated scenes with each other. We had created a master list of scenes that needed to be animated and students put their names next to the ones they wanted to do. Some students had to ask for help with their scenes. Since this was a collaborative project, working together and sharing work, ideas, and progress was a big part of our weekly schedule. In the photos shown, drawings and storyboards are scattering the table for reference for the digital animation.

battle of the miace.mp4

Game of Bones, Battle of the miace

For 2.5 months students worked on composing a story together. They wrote, storyboarded, animated, and created sound effects and music. They learned how to problem-solve, manage time, and adjust their animations. (Sometimes the movement happened too fast) They persevered through difficult moments and compromised on the details of the story. This aligned with our big idea of connectedness.

Mixed Media Collage

Taking photos

After working digitally, we knew students would want to work on something hands on. The learned how to take repeated photos of one object or area. We chose the area surrounding the school since they spend a lot of time there. This challenged them to slow down and really investigate their environment.

photo collage

We got the photos printed! Students next arranged the photos. This was sometimes challenging if they did the activity too fast or even had too many photos. Overheard during this activity - "It's like a puzzle".

Drawing

Students added their own drawings to "extend" the collage. This offered students to be able to add their own style. This student, Elijah makes a lot of comics, so he enjoyed this addition to the project. Another way to connect to our big idea- Connectedness.

MOsaic and photo collage

Activity Collage

After Spring break, we asked students what activity they did. Then another student took turns taking pictures of the activity, They had to sketch out the scene and use magazine collage, painting or coloring to fill it out. We wanted to connect to what students do outside of school and make something with their hands after working on the animation for over two months.

Expanded Collage

This student chose baseball and he found colors in magazines that align with the colors in his scene. The goal was to exaggerate an action and fill the entire page. They had a lot of fun with this project!

Mixed Media

Another student's collage. This student used paint and put himself as the subject. We love his imagination and intuitive art-making.

Mosaic

Students worked to make a mosaic after we cut up some pieces of paper together. The goal was to reflect on the various projects we had done and pick a creature/character to make a mosaic out of. Something we had already created. Then they picked a handful of cut-up paper out of a bucket to assemble their mosaic. This was an exercise on collective materials/ideas as well as making something within limited parameters.

Certificates!

We did so much this year and we wanted the students to feel good about all the hard work that they had done! Each student recieved a certificate with a background picture of them during CAPE or a still from the group animation.

We had Fun!

Some process photos from this semester. As we developed this community, students became more free to lean into their style and trust their instincts within the projects.

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