Creating Screen Based Materials for Children

Yesterday I attended a presentation by the Digital Media Consortia. The aim was to give the attendees an idea of how to go about creating material that would appeal to a child audience.

The main speaker of the event was Magnus Scheving, creator of LazyTown and probably better known as one of the main characters, Sportacus.
Magnus explained that it has taken him 12 years to get LazyTown to the level that it is at now. The programme has been sold to over 100 countries and is a huge success. The basic idea of the show is to encourage children to lead a healthy lifelstyle through entertaining them rather than by telling them. Magnus said that the show should be thought of as one person with each of the individual characters playing one particular aspect.
The main piece of advice that he gave was that to get a great idea we must constantly ask ourselves and others to "be more specific". By doing this it is possible to get all of the small details that are needed and that wouldn't be thought of initially.

The official LazyTown website can be found here.

ExtraStrong

ExtraStrong is an animation that I found whilst I was browsing YouTube today. It can be found here: ExtraStrong. I really like this animation. It has been made using the stop motion technique by three people called Lorenzo Latrofa, Giovanni Braggio and Fabio Santomauro.
I love how seemless the animation is and how so much has been done with just paper. I just had to put a link to it in here so that I can find it again in the future.

Foam Stop Motion Models

Today I had a go at starting to make a foam latex stop-motion puppet for my latest animation project. I originally intended to make the model out of plasticine and I did but I found that it was too soft and would melt quickly under the animation studio lights. :( That is why I have turned to foam latex.
I managed to create a plasticine mock up (without a head) of the model from which to create the mold. I packed half of the model in clay and then poured a plaster-like mixture (I've forgotten what it's called) on top. This will create half of the mold. Tomorrow I will remove the clay and plasticine model and be left with one mold half. Then I have to repeat the process to make a full mold.
Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures today but will ensure that I do so tomorrow.

Animation Web Ring

This is just a quick entry to post a link to the Animation Web Ring. The web ring has many sites of professional and amature animators and covers the main areas of 2D cell, 3D stop motion and computer animation.
A particularly good site seems to be one owned by Phil Dale found here.

RetroJunk

RetroJunk.com that is. It may primarily be a site for people to go to and remember their childhood days but also has many animated intros to live action programmes and cartoons from the 70s, 80s and 90s. I find it very interesting to look at to see how animation and techniques have changed over the years.

Frozen Moon Productions

This afternoon we attended a talk given by Mark Kendrick from Frozen Moon Productions ltd. Frozen Moon is an animation company that has been set up by two ex students of NEWI and they work from the Innovation Centre next to the art and design school studios. Mark came in to talk to us about setting up our own business and about the current "Science" film competition. We were shown examples of their work and some examples of what can be entered into the Science contest.
All of their work that we were shown had been produced in Flash but to say that they are a proper company that have produced work for the likes of Firefox, it didn't look that great.
They also said that they would be happy to try and take on people for work experience and that they will be looking to hire 6 new animators within the next 4 months.

Contact details:
Mark Kendrick
Mobile: 07832121002
Landline: 01978 293516
E-mail: mark@frozenmoon.co.uk
Address:
Innovation Centre
Plas Coch Campus
Mold Road
Wrexham
LL11 2AW