Welcome to week two of our remote learning updates.  It's hard to imagine that we will be making these for the rest of the school year.  We are so proud of our #AAPG37 family coming together during these extraordinary times to keep classes active and student creativity flowing. While the magic isn't happening at Gallery 37, our work is happening in homes all over Chicago.  Let's check in with our classes and see what everyone was up to last week...

Our animators spent the week learning about the history of the art of storyboarding.  A storyboard is a visual organizer of your animation. Storyboards are an important way for producers and directors in the animation industry to show fellow animators and project contributors the story via a series of cells. Storyboards explain what is happening in a scene, scene dialog, and outline the project’s story via linear “bite sized” chunks.  You know how architects create Blueprints before building houses? Well, the Storyboard is the Blueprint for a film. Storyboards are the ultimate way to plan out your film. By storyboarding a film beforehand, you can completely pre-plan props, settings, camera angles, actor placement and movements, special and practical effects, etc so that when it comes time for actual production everything will work much more efficiently (which will also save the producers $$$$$). Storyboards allow for the right individuals to check for error and fix them before a mistake becomes too large and expensive to fix.

Students were asked to create a storyboard for a long term stop motion animation project.  The production part of this project will take three whole weeks, students will be asked to create a film that is 1.5 minutes long, which is A LOT of pictures to take.  Storyboards have to cover visuals, dialog, and actions that occur in the scene. Storyboards were submitted for approval on Friday and students who now have an approved concept can dive deep into their projects.  We are excited to see what they create.  Check out Alessandra Montero's animated storyboard below:

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We are excited to announce that now that Spring Break has ended, Advanced Arts has hit the ground running with our NEW Remote Learning programming. Each of our classes has a remote learning plan in place so that even if we can't gather at Gallery 37 for class, we are still connected as a school community, creating, and learning during these extraordinary times.

Now, lets check in and see what our students and staff have been up to...

The fun and learning hasn't let up in Animation & Sequential Arts for students, despite not having their powerful computers and animation programs with them at home.  They're taking it old school and learning all about traditional animation techniques! First they utilized light boards and 100 SHEETS OF PAPER to create traditional hand drawn animation just like their Disney Forefathers did years ago. After that students learned all about the history of stop motion animation, how it came to be, different genres, genre defining creators, and more were discussed in this historical intro to the genre.  With historical knowledge in place students moved on this week to their FIRST stop motion animation project, which they all created using the FREE app Stop Motion Studio which works on all smart phones! Students were given a basic program introduction and then asked to create a short video that tested varying aspects of the genre. The results have been fantastic so far and we look forward to seeing what these amazing animators will do in this new program next!

Check out student Faith Lasley's video "Milo's Quarantine" for a taste of the stop motion fun!

Video Production started this week off with an online critique for their Self Portrait projects. The students and teachers watched and responded to each other with considered and constructive feedback. Each student found new and exciting ways to experiment with filming while at home; found footage, editing, sound design, and text! You can tell they each found specific ways to represent themselves in a video Self Portrait, from digging into personal archives, to collaborating with friends, to gathering gifs online. On Wednesday the class had its first Google Meet Up, where everyone checked in and the teachers introduced the next project!

The students are now working on their treatments for their new upcoming project and we can't wait to see what they will look like!

The Video Production Team's Office Hours:
Claire - Tuesdays Thursdays and Fridays
Zach - Mondays and Wednesdays
Tracy - Thursdays and Fridays
Jake - Mondays and Tuesdays

Vocal arts is getting their virtual classroom ready for some individual and group performances. In the meantime students have been catching up with each other and sharing what they have been doing to keep their voices busy while at home!