While Spring has not completely arrived in Chicago weather-wise, we have rolled right into our final quarter of the year here at Advanced Arts.  It's amazing how fast this year has gone, time truly flies when you are having fun.  Our Spring Showcase the final exhibition of our year is less than a month away!  Come on down to Gallery 37 (66 E. Randolph St.) May 22-23 and see performances from our performing arts department at 3pm and 6pm both days.  May 22nd will be the opening of our Visual Arts Exhibition in our 5th Floor Center Space Gallery including an EDIBLE exhibition by our Culinary Arts students.  If you can't make it to opening night the visual exhibition will be up a full week.  We can't wait!

Video Student Kiernan Francis also had his film I am Afraid of the Lights selected for Cinema Chicago's Cineyouth Film Festival at the Music Box Theater.  Kiernan describes his film as "A montage of the day in the life of a high school student, where over-stimulating classroom and social environments lead to feelings of dissociation."  Kiernan's film was shown on Sunday April 28th at 2:45pm as part of the Young Visionaries (Experimental) selections.  We are so proud to see Kiernan's progress as a young filmmaker this year, congratulations Kiernan!  

The young men of our jazz program are truly rocking it not only as a trio but as individual musicians.  We here at AAP are so proud of our Jazz students and how they are carrying on the prestige and tradition of this amazing program.  Our ambitious trio most recently competed in the annual UIC Jazz Festival Competition.  The ensemble delivered an outstanding performance showing amazing teamwork and earned a "superior rating" which is the highest performance level attainable!

Another achievement to come out of the UIC Jazz Festival Competition goes to our senior student and upright bassist extraordinaire, Steven Bowman.  Steven will be honored and receive an award at a ceremony on 04/16/19, for best solo performance.  Steven blew the crowd away and we couldn't be more proud of him!

Want to see these amazing young men perform together?  Well come on down to our Spring Showcase May 22nd and 23rd!  Our Trio will be performing in the Storefront Theater on the first floor of our building at 66. E. Randolph St.  Performances start at 3pm and 6pm both days.  Come on down, Chicago! 

- Until next time.  Stay creative, Chicago!

Dancing for Change!

On December 20, the dance students from AAP Gallery 37 performed at the Museum of Science and Industry’s “A Night At The Museum!”  This event was sponsored by Chance the Rapper’s Social Works charity.  The students performed to a packed house - 10,000 people - at the sold out charity venue that was the second annual fund raiser to combat homelessness in Chicago.  Our students performed two excerpts from the Lion King supported by a choir comprised of CPS elementary school students.  The lead vocal soloist, Rashada Dawan, was a former Curie student of our dance teacher, Melinda Wilson.  She is living an artists’ dream as a union actress, winning praise throughout the US for her performance in the lead role as Caroline in, Caroline or Change, at the Goodman Theater.  Students received national exposure for their energetic rendition of Circle of Life and He Lives in You.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably heard of the amazing new animated film by Sony and Marvel; Spiderman: Into The Spider-Verse.  The movie has received rave reviews, sitting at a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, and has been one of the number one movies in America for weeks!

The film was an amazing blend of CG and hand-drawn animation with the aim of imitating the art of comic book illustrations. The animation team even tried to replicate color offsets, printing errors in comic books that can make a panel look like it’s slightly out of focus. The animation team rethought what an animated film could look like, and created brand new techniques across multiple programs to achieve the results seen in the film. In a regular animated film, it would take an artist about a week to animate four seconds of film. For Spider-Verse, it took each artist one week to animate one second.  The movie took over three years to animate and was a work of love for many involved in it.  It goes to show you how true inspiration can make a studio go beyond its usual comfort zone.  The quality of animation seen in this film is multiple levels above anything else we have seen from Sony Animated Studios. 

The animation team was literally inventing new strategies and pipelines they’ve never tried while animating the film with hard deadline ahead of them. To create a raw, less perfect look, the team decided not to use motion blur and numerous inbetweener frames, an effect in computer animation that blurs frames to imitate an image captured from a rapidly moving camera.  The animation for Into the Spider-Verse was done on twos (12 frames per second instead of 24). It’s a rare creative choice in CGI and is more often seen in Anime and older US based animation. 

Our Animation students were quite excited to experience this film on the big screen, so we organized a field trip for them to do just that!  Wednesday students went to the Showplace Icon on Roosevelt St to ENTER THE SPIDER-VERSE!  It was a fun and educational experience for the students.  Into the Spider-Verse is not only an amazing landmark in animation, but also for superhero films.  It stars Miles Morales, a 15 year old boy living in Brooklyn who is black, and gains the mantle of Spider-Man after the unfortunate death of Peter Parker.  He encounters Spider-Gwen, a female version of Spider-Man, and many other versions of the hero across multiple universes. 
The movie really shows its young viewers that anyone can wear the mask and be a hero! 

Our students were able to break down the animated processes used in the film in an in class critique the next day, and were so excited and pumped about the film a day later that the soundtrack was on repeat in class all day.  As the future of Animation it has inspired our students to reach new heights and we can't wait to see where they take this inspiration!

Caitlin Stich, our CPS teacher in Video and 3D Computer Modeling (aka Animation and Sequential Arts) has just recently received National Board Teacher Certification!  The National Board believes that every student deserves to be taught by an accomplished teacher.  The process that was developed by teachers for teachers is a rigorous standards-based process to ensure that teachers who receive this distinction have demonstrated what highly accomplished teachers should know and be able to do.  Anyone who knows about NBTC knows that only the best of the best succeeds, and Caitlin has proven she is one of the best!  We are so happy she is part of our team!

“National Board Certification was designed to develop, retain and recognize accomplished teachers and to generate ongoing improvement in schools nationwide. It is the most respected professional certification available in K-12 education.”

- Until next time.  Stay creative, Chicago!