Frame by Frame Fun

There are no available registration dates at this time.

Note: This class will be held in an online format using the Zoom platform. 

Stop Motion Animation has been described as the easiest animation technique to access and the most difficult to master. In Stop Motion Animation for Families any close group (i.e. a family between 2 and 6 people) can participate in this three-day workshop. There is a minimum of equipment required – a smartphone and a tripod. Lessons will be shared each day by award-winning animator and professor, Tom Gasek, who has contributed animation to such popular films as Coraline, Chicken Run, the Aardman Animation Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit classic The Wrong Trousers, and many others.

With over 30 years of award winning professional stop motion animation experience as an animator and director, Tom teaches stop motion animation in the School of Film and Animation at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has written two editions of a book that is the only complete source for “non-puppet” stop motion. He has taught these techniques through Fulbright Grants in Peru and China and has lead workshops at the New Orleans Children’s Film Festival and the Wisconsin (Youth) Film Festival among many others.

Through daily online workshop lectures, Tom will teach simple animation principles and will demonstrate applications to those principles through exercises that will prove fun and informative to small groups of filmmakers.

Learning outcomes will include:

  • Camera work (smartphones)
  • Simple capture software for the smartphone through an inexpensive smartphone application
  • A few animation principles like “easing in and out,” “secondary motion,” “anticipation,” “ dynamics in movement” and more
  • Simple lighting principles
  • Simple “grip” work for shooting
  • Simple animated movie making

Each morning starting at 10:00 a.m. (Eastern time) Tom will give a 90-minute lecture and demonstration via an online platform (Zoom). Examples of the work will be demonstrated. Tom will assign and explain a simple and fun exercise for each group to execute that afternoon.  Those assignments will be uploaded and discussed the following day in the morning presentation. Tom will also be available to answer any questions that might arise. 

Students will gain knowledge in “non-puppet” stop motion techniques like animating people, objects and time-lapse. Participants will be able to take this knowledge and experience and expand upon it in their own time or can take the next step into deepening their efforts into stop motion. 

Equipment needs:

Enjoy three days of family fun while studying with a master of stop motion animation.  

 

More information on Tom Gasek can be found at: www.tdgasek.com

Tom’s book:
https://www.academia.edu/30998117/Tom_Gasek_-_Frame_by_Frame_Stop_Motion
https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Gasek-Frame-Frame-Non-Traditional/dp/B01FOCRDQC

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Instructor: Tom Gasek

Tom Gasek has over 30 years of award winning professional stop motion animation experience as an animator and director. He worked with directors Will Vinton, Art Clokey and Henry Selick. At Aardman Animations in Bristol England, he contributed animation to Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit short, “The Wrong Trousers” and the Peter Lord / Nick Park Feature, “Chicken Run.” Gasek co-directed and animated the “Inside-Out Boy” for Nickelodeon, which is a part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has maintained two small stop motion studios, one in San Francisco called “Sculptoons” in the early 90’s and OOH, Inc. in Massachusetts., and contributed animation to Aardman’s “Creature Comforts America”, Sony Bravia’s “Play-Doh”, Laika Studio’s “Coraline”, a series of Amazon Prime spots for Hornet Inc. in 2016 and he continues to direct and animate commercials and independent films. In the past several years, Tom produced, directed and animated two award winning short independent stop motion films, “Off-Line” and “Ain’t No Fish”. He is currently working on a short “pixilated” film called “4 @ 60.”

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