Animation Apprentice Workshop

It was Thursday the 16th and I was so excited for what was going to take place in the Tusitala meeting room at 12 o’clock. The creators of bro town came to our school to show us some techniques and tips on how to animate. The creators Maka and Ali were here to teach us how animation is done. Nils is a guy that came with and he works at the museum.

Our lesson was about the history of cartoons and how they first made cartoons. Ali showed us a number of some cartoon characters silhouettes. We had to guess what cartoon they were from by looking at the features. The first one was a dinosaur, but it wasn't just any old dino. It was a the first moving picture and dated back to the 1900s. A few years later people took it to the next level creating the first mickey mouse steamboat cartoon. It was the first cartoon that included sound.

After all of the yelling and laughing that the silhouettes brought, Ali showed us a very interesting toy. It was a zoetrope! What is a zoetrope? Well its a toy that shows an animation that you draw on paper. Ali showed us an animation where there was a hand was dribbling a ball. It was so cool! 

After taking turns and seeing the amazing animation, it was time to learn how to do 'tweening.' If you dont know what tweening is, it's when there are two lines and they are split in between to show the moving object. We had some exercises to learn how to tween, then we were handed a piece of paper with lines that kind of looked like a jellyfish. We drew loose lines on a separate piece of paper and colored it in. Then we put it in the zoetrope and it was soo awesome! It was moving around and flopping its tentacles.

Tomorrow is our last session with the Animation Apprentice workshop. I really want to keep going to the workshop because it is so cool. I have learnt so much through the first session and I cant wait until tomorrow.