Workshops
There are no available registration dates at this time.
NOTE: This course will be held in a live, online format using the Zoom Platform.
Class meets Sat & Sun, 10am-1pm & 2pm-5pm ET
A crankie–otherwise known as a moving panorama–is a very old storytelling form involving an illustrated or decorated scroll wound around two spools and hand-cranked horizontally, often inside a diorama or other miniature stage-like setting. In the history of cinema, crankies inspired the earliest ‘moving pictures’, and could be as big as an entire theatre stage! For our purposes, we’ll keep the scale and mechanics accessible and affordable so that we each have a complete crankie to present and share with each other at the conclusion of the workshop.
This two-day workshop in the virtual studio will focus on the storytelling potential of the crankie, including ways of collaging or repurposing your existing artwork, adding text, embellishing the moving scroll with special effects like lighting or silhouette puppets and even adding a voiceover narration or music. You’ll bring your crankie box materials (see Supply List below) and–very important–a story or sequential art idea! You may also bring supporting sketches, prints, photos etc. We’ll begin with thumbnailing or storyboarding rough sketches for each panel or segment of your visual narrative, and then transfer the sketch/idea to a scroll, where you’ll create sequential art in any medium you choose.
This workshop is open to all ages and could be a great collaborative project for a parent and child or a writer/illustrator team. Also, in celebration of Halloween weekend, family-friendly spooky stories are especially encouraged!
Supply List:
– Paper or other drawing surface for your panorama artwork. Paper must be pliable enough to roll, and fairly durable.
– Your favorite drawing medium(s) and/or papers for collaging, including printed photographs, repurposed artwork, magazine cutouts and many more possibilities.
– Tape or glue
-A “Crankie Box Kit” is included with your tuition. Kits are available for US and Canada only, Canadian shipping additional. Outside the US and Canada? You can still take the class, but will have to use your own box and supplies.
All images: ©Lucky Platt,
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Instructor: Lucky Platt
Author-illustrator Lucky Platt creates books for children in her lakeside rural Maine studio. She works in a range of traditional art mediums, and her stories explore themes of resilience, healing, positive self expression and inclusion. She has presented art and writing workshops for children and adults through the Maine Crafts Association, Schoodic Arts for All, the Maine Arts Commission and Rockland Public Library, and has shown her artwork in galleries and non-traditional/unexpected art spaces in Maine and New York. In early 2020, she left her work as an arts administrator to devote all of her time to writing and illustrating. She has created two self-published picture books on commission; Imagine a Wolf (Page Street Kids, January 2021) is her debut picture book for the trade market. Lucky is a two-time recipient of an Individual Artist Project Grant from the Maine Arts Commission (2016, 2020), a two-time recipient of an Anderson Ranch Art Center scholarship (2019, 2020), and a recipient of an Ox-Bow Artists’Residency scholarship for printmaking (2004). She studied painting, drawing and printmaking at Vassar College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Complutense City University of Madrid, and has enriched her craft with workshops at the Maine Women Writers’Collection, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Farnsworth Art Museum and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts among others.
