A Day in the Life of a Sketchbook - new photos
Some more photos of the gang after some follow-up interviews in October.
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: animation, art, disability, Down-syndrome, film
A Day in the Life of a Sketchbook
Join four talented artists with Down syndrome as they tackle the enormously complex process of animated filmmaking with joy and intense concentration.Sketchbook Interview 1: Why we made this film
Over the next few weeks I will be uploading some short clips of the live interviews conducted with the gang. The interviews were full of bright humour, profound answers, and (later on) some outrageous comedy! Enjoy…
This was the response to “why are we doing this film?”
(Right to left: Matthew, Ninah, Petra, Katherine. Note Petra’s bare feet!)
http://citizen.nfb.ca/media/sketchbookinterview1.flv Category : Uncategorized
Tags: animation, art, disability, documentary, Down-syndrome, film, movie, special-needs
A Day in the Life of a Sketchbook - Our Screening
http://citizen.nfb.ca/media/sketchbookscreening.flvJust a brief moment of the gang after the screening…
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: animation, art, disability, Down-syndrome
A Day in the Life of a Sketchbook
Hard to believe that we’ve just finished our last full week of this 6-week animation workshop, and I am really feeling the sadness that comes at the end of a project. I must have looked sad this week because I’ve been getting a lot of hugs from the artists!
We’ve had a number of people (all of whom work with different organizations which provide services for adults with special needs) come in to observe the workshop, and they’ve all been very excited about the project. The group is used to visitors by now, and readily explain their artwork and the animation process. I think (I hope!) it’s been an interesting and empowering experience for these amazing artists.
They were all in a great mood this week - yesterday was a particularly lovely day as everyone was extremely talkative (even our shyest artist was chatting merrily with everyone yesterday) and still focused on their work. It is wonderful to see them laughing and joking with each other and with the staff. Salim (our brilliant camera/sound man) received many smiles and elaborate explanations of the work being done.
Next week we will finish up their last drawings, go out for a celebratory lunch, create foley sound for their films, and have a small screening for family and friends of the rough edits of their work. Then - hard to believe - we pack up the equipment to take back to the NFB in Montreal, where I will start to animate additional footage to fill in the gaps in the animation they’ve completed. Each of them have done an enormous amount of animation in 6 weeks (Katherine has created literally thousands of gorgeous, colourful frames!!!!), but some of the interviews are longer than the amount of imagery generated in this workshop so I will do my best to animate based on the sketchbook drawings, photos, and references they have generously provided.
Yesterday we watched all of their films and each of them gave me their feedback - we tweaked the edits here and there - Katherine decided to take out a title she’d animated, and to put in some other frames we’d edited out. I will be coming back to Toronto on a regular basis to meet with each of the artists to discuss the work-in-progress. I am looking forward to continuing to collaborate with them on the final film, throughout the animation, editing, and post-production process.
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: animation, disability, Down-syndrome, film, self-advocacy, self-portrait, workshop
A Day in the Life of a Sketchbook - early notes
Here are some notes compiled from early emails and writings from the first days of the project.
June 20, 2007
Hello all,
Just a quick note to say that our first day went wonderfully! The group was so excited and they all seemed to really enjoy the experience. I was very impressed with how quickly everyone learned to operate the camera setups on their own, and I am looking forward to tomorrow’s session.
Warmly,
Shira
June 25, 2007
I asked the participants to draw Toronto as they see it, since they will all refer to it in the interviews, and they all came up with really interesting and very different views of the city. 3 of the 4 participants are already creating work that is usable for the final project - ahead of schedule! One still needs some time to ease into the process, but that is fine…??
They are all completely at ease with the cameras/keypads now, and it’s exciting to see them come in and get right to work!
Katherine says she can’t wait for tomorrow to finish her city piece, and Petra stayed late to finish her city animation. They are chatting happily with each other now, and are actively curious about each others’ work, though there are long periods of silence where everyone is extremely focused.??We will wait another couple of days before beginning the interviews - I would like to wait for the shyer two to feel really at ease. Tomorrow will be a shorter workday as they will meet the entire Mediatheque staff for the first time, so we will wait until Wednesday or Thursday to conduct the first interview.?
On the technical end things are going pretty well. They all love working with the underlights, but they find the side lights are too bright even with 40W (equivalent) bulbs in them - so I think we will be working underlit for most of the session. The lightboxes have a slight hotspot but the work looks pretty good on the high-res exports. I’ll do some cropping for the final images. We had a couple of unexplained flicker moments in Matthew’s piece today but I think it can be fixed in Photoshop.
June 26, 2007
We had a wonderful, productive day today. The gang met the Mediatheque staff and everyone was thrilled. They all finished their cityscapes, and Matthew began a self-portrait which will be one of many. Tomorrow the rest of them will begin their self-portraits. This week we are focusing on drawing - next week we will introduce other techniques. They all wanted to stay later today to keep on working. Yay!??I figured out the flicker in Matthew’s animation - it corresponds to turning off the lightbox for break or lunchtime and resuming before there was enough time to stabilize the lights. Today we left them on throughout the session and there was no discernible flicker at all.?More soon!
June 28, 2007
The group met the whole Mediatheque staff on Tuesday, with great excitement.?We’ve just finished our first full week, and all is going very well (lovely, fruitful, and exhausting)! Today we had our first interview session, which lasted for 2 hours and seemed to pass incredibly quickly. They all loved the interview process and were forthcoming and articulate and were very comfortable with the camera and microphone - even Katherine, who is the shyest one. I am listening to the tapes now and the sound is great - their voices sound clear and warm - but we do have some faint background traffic sounds so next week we will possibly record in the cinema or in the upstairs editing suites. (In any case we will take a lot of room tone from all of the recording locations.)?
Next week we will start working with paint-on-glass and clay-on-glass. I will cut the sound from the first interviews this weekend so that Tuesday they will have some sound to help them structure their work. We will also go further into the idea of self-portrait.?
It’s fascinating to see what each of them likes and what they are less interested in.?Petra is fascinated by everything - she is incredibly creative and has been eager to try everything offered. She’s so articulate and bright and has been experimenting a lot with the techniques we have tried so far. She loves animation and grasps even the most difficult aspects - she animated a car moving across the screen, drawing and erasing and redrawing completely on her own - she instinctively moved the car on an arc to make it look like it is zooming by. She amazes us on a daily basis with her humour and intelligence and talent.?
Katherine loves the additive animation process - she patiently makes her beautiful designs appear line by line, and is very much aware of how she is able to vary the speed that her work appears on the screen. She is able but not as interested in trying character animation. She said she feels uneasy erasing and redrawing but is excited to try moving cutouts so I will make some cutouts from scans of her drawings. She is very excited to try clay-on-glass and paint-on-glass. She is quiet but has been slowly revealing her bright humour as she feels more comfortable in the group.?
Matthew is comfortable with everything, and is excited and eager to try new techniques. He gets a bit tired of working for long periods on the same sequence, but he musters the energy and creates interesting work. He’s done some beautiful animation and also created some amazing sketches of his voyage from England to Canada when he was a baby that I will be able to use in the fall to base my animation on. His enthusiasm is contagious, and keeps us all motivated and happy.?
Ninah, as the oldest of the gang, is learning more slowly but is starting to grasp the more complex parts of the process. She is star-struck at being here (she signs autographs at her other workplace and telling people she works at a movie studio) and has been a bit distracted but yesterday she worked closely with Dan and created some great work!??All of the participants love being here and we are all so happy to come to work every morning! Things are progressing very well and I can’t imagine a more wonderful experience.??
?
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: animation, developmental-delay, disability, Down-syndrome, film, intellectually-challenged, self-advocacy, self-portrait, workshop
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About this blog
Join four talented artists with Down syndrome as they tackle the enormously complex process of animated filmmaking with joy and intense concentration.
Blog Authors
ShiraShira Avni has been an animator at the NFB since 1997. She also teaches animation at Concordia University. Her film John and Michael, a love story between two men with Down syndrome, won 13 awards and screened in 50 festivals worldwide. Shira lives happily in Montreal with puppeteer Salim Hammad.
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