On Resurrecting a 24yr. old Animation Project

Unearthed envelope of drawings by Gregg Emerydetail of stack of illos by GE

So while my hub (fellow artist and teacher Gregg Emery) and I have been on Spring Break he unearthed a couple of things from the deepest bowels of the garage (imagine a garage that two artist employ). He had been stretching some new canvases when he stumbled across a large brown envelope that housed a project he did back when he was in the 9th grade.

Mind you we currently teach high-school and we have just assigned a sixty-second digi artistic-animation project to our advanced portfolio development class made up of 10, 11 and 12th graders.

details of 24 yr. old Animation by Gregg Emery

In the past I have made some short test runs of my own animations inspired by artist William Kentridge, who primarily illustrates a single drawing that he animates by erasing and redrawing on the same page. You can see samples of his work on Youtube because much of how Kentridge's work is displayed, is in moving projection form. However, even with our love of Kentridge and my work on animation I had never known that in my husband's past lurked this behemoth of an animation memory.

Today, using programs like IMovie on the Mac or MovieMaker on a PC (and countless other free movie programs) it has become very simple to drop hundreds of photos into a track and speed them up. Now, things like transitions and animated titles often come in prepackaged cookie-cutter forms.

Yet back in the North Country 24 yrs. ago there were no digital cameras, no accessible movie making programs and definitely no prepackaged ways of making animated titles.

hand drawn animated title by Gregg Emery

So here lies my husbands ninth grade self-assigned animation project in which he hand illustrated every single sec of movement and photographed each new page. His art teacher at the time assisted with driving the roll of painstakingly shot 8mm film to get developed. Needless to say the film never returned developed.

There had been something mysteriously wrong with either the development or the film itself.

Can you imagine the heartbreak that caused a young man who had put in that many hours of self-assigned work?? In the end this entire project never saw the light of day. It was designated into an envelope that was to be moved around and spontaneously unearthed 24 yrs. later. opening scenes by Gregg Emery

So for my last days of Spring Break, my project is to do some artistic CPR and resurrect this amazing piece of art work from the land of the forgotten.

my sequencing notes

We have already reordered all the sequencing. Since it is so old, it was often difficult for my husband to remember what many of his intentions in specific areas were.

I have also written out his overall story arc vision and we discussed where I might breathe some 'Marisol' life into aspects of the story to boost his overall narrative.

Thankfully, my husband loved all my proposed additions (not changes) and I'm starting today!

Comments

[stainboy]

What an amazing thing...to have anyone in this world who appreciates your life and work so much to put the time in you have. I am truly blessed.

[Orph]

mari these are amazing, you and gregg had such talent at ninth grade and it still continues to grow. It would be cool if there was a video for this=)

[Ben]

Alright, I'll continue our conversation here then! I did some research a while back, and it seems that this website is fairly popular. I think SVA orders their paper from there. This is a direct link to the peg bar I ordered.
http://www.cartoonsupplies.com/product_info.php/cPath/27/products_id/89?osCsid=8475a146ffcf843cf7ba72f1d3a533f5
I just used double-sided tape to stick it to my light box. Not as nice as a professional disc, but $5 versus $400 makes a bit of a difference. I honestly don't remember which paper I ended up buying, but it's nice because they will punch it for you for free. I used a regular scanner for the piece on my demo reel, and I didn't have many problems with registration (I use After Effects for editing, and you can easily nudge a frame if it's a little off). If you want to go all-out, you need to set a camera up on a rig above whatever you put your peg bar on.

When I was at the Penn summer program, our hand-drawn animation was based on Kentridge...probably to save paper though. I almost ripped through my single sheet of printer paper from erasing so much. It's also pretty funny that you mention the students wanting to all go over the 60 seconds. Generally when you animate on the computer/in 3D the action ends up being too slow, and when you hand-draw every frame you end up being too fast. Just something to keep in mind. :)

[Nicole]

ohhhh i can't wait to see the product of this project!
:)

[isabella!]

that is so sad.