Skate from Rebecca Rochon on Vimeo.
I just began my Experimental Animation class and it's time to (as the great philosopher Frizzle once said) "take chances, make mistakes, and GET MESSY!"
And messy I indeed became. In fact, our first project in this class was to create an "animation messy" wherein we had been assigned to animate in a "straight ahead method" of our choosing. We could animate with sand, wet paint on glass, or even chalk.
"I'm not an intelligent, talented animator like you Ms. Rochon!" you say, "What on earth is the 'straight ahead' method and furthermore an 'animation messy'!!!!???" you ask.
Intelligent? who me? TALENTED? awe shucks how nice of you to say so.
So, the 'straight ahead method' is basically another way of saying animating without much pre-planning. Usually, animators have to plan ahead every single drawing so that the animation can be timed and executed perfectly. Key moments and character positions will be drawn in first to get a rough idea of the scene and slowly more drawings are added in between those key drawings to smooth the action out.
For this project I animated without a ton of pre-planning. I had my basic idea but I did one drawing after another rather than locking down key moments and filling drawings in between them.
Figure Skating is a big part of my life. I began skating at the age of 8 after I found ballet too boring and continued to skate and compete until grade 11. Although I quit it awhile ago, Figure Skating is not completely out of my life! I have my coaching license and coach here in Vancouver.
Skating really influences my animation because it taught me how to analyze and control my body movement (a helpful tool when animating). I had to create graceful arcs with every part of my body: my arms, to my wrists, my fingers etc.
Those arcs are going to be my focus for this project.
I was inspired by Norman Mclaren's "Pas de Deux".
Figure Skating is Ballet on ice, so this was a natural transition to make.
In fact, crazy enough here is a video from the 2005 world champions of the gorgeous Sasha Cohen skating to"Pas de Deux"!
Sasha Cohen is one of the most graceful skaters in my opinion, and watching her makes for incredible inspiration.
I will also be looking at the powerful and inspiring Canadian Olympic champion Joannie Rochette.
Here is her Olympic Performance, you can see her strength on the ice. This performance was only a few days after her mother's death.
Here are some skating sketches I did to try and lock down some key poses before I went to paint and create them with sand.
Here is what the sand art looks like before editing . In the video I inversed (swapped black and white) this image in order to a create consistency in my piece.
more poses...
I used paint, chalk, sand and paper cut outs to create "Skate". I thoroughly enjoyed using such tactile and traditional mediums. At first I was intimidated but as an animator I really enjoyed having an element of chance and freedom in my art making process. I really loved being able to use my muscle memory to create the animation rather than looking at specific reference footage. I felt like I was animating straight from the heart. Animators tend to plan and control their work down to every line. It was wonderful to let loose and let the medium tell a story.
