Heat Spell!

Heat Spell, directed by DePaul Animation's Jo Dery and produced by Simple Machine Studio, will debut on November 19 at 6pm in the CDM Theater, 14 East Jackson. Join us for the celebration!

Experimental Animation: Boot Rotation

Here's a collaborative project from ANI356/456 Experimental Animation: Everyone sat in a circle around a boot and drew several sketches of it. Then we animated the drawings to show the boot rotating. We were discussing the threshold for seeing continuous motion, especially with very different graphic styles, from one frame to the next.

2012 Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, Oct. 27-28

The 2012 Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation will be held Oct. 27-28. The opening program is at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., at 2 PM on Saturday Oct. 27. Festival guest Nancy Andrews will present her films at the 7 PM program on Saturday at DePaul in the Daley Building theater, 247 S. State St, and there will be two programs on Sunday at 1 PM and 4 PM at DePaul.

Eyeworks is a festival focusing on abstract animation and unconventional character animation. Festival programs showcase outstanding experimental animation of all sorts: classic films, new works and rare masterpieces. We have collected some really amazing short films this year, including some classic abstract films, some rarely-seen treasures, and some of the best new experimental work being made by animators today. We're especially excited about our festival guest, Nancy Andrews, who will be showing three of her beautiful puppet films on Saturday evening. And, DePaul's very own Jo Dery will have a piece showing on loop in the theater lobby throughout the weekend.

The full details on the festival, including showtimes, lineup of work, and tickets, are on the festival website: www.eyeworksfestival.com.

We would be thrilled if you would join us for the festival! No matter what kind of animation you like, I guarantee that you will see something unexpected, inspiring, hilarious, and amazing at Eyeworks.

Assistant Professor Alexander Stewart goes to Croatia

DePaul Animation would like to wish Alexander good luck as he heads to the 25FPS festival in Croatia this week! His short film, Crusts, is in competition. You can watch the trailer for the film here.

DePaul Animation faculty represent at C.A.K.E.

The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo is almost upon us! This exciting event will take place on June 16 and 17, at Columbia College's Ludington Building, 1104 South Wabash (that's right down the street from CDM). Artists from all over the world will be presenting comics for sale -- including our very own Associate Professor of Animation, Scott Roberts! Scott will be there with his comic, The Hound and the Musch. 


On C.A.K.E.'s opening day, June 16, Assistant Professor Alexander Stewart will present a program of short animations, an extravaganza co-curated by his Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation partner, Lilli Carre. Titled Double Vision: Comics and Animation, the program showcases work from artists that cross over from comics to animation and vice versa. Filmmakers Jim Trainor, Nate Beaty, Amy Lockhart, Marc Bell, and Assistant Professor Jo Dery will be present to introduce the work, and to give insight on the parallel creative processes of comics and animation. Check out the Eyeworks website for more info, and for details on the other screenings Alexander and Lilli are organizing this month -- not only in Chicago, but in France and Croatia! 


Below, Scott's comic on the shelf at Quimby's. 

The Onion A.V. Club interviews Eyeworks

The founders of the Eyeworks Experimental Animation Festival, Lilli Carré and DePaul Animation professor Alexander Stewart, were interviewed about experimental animation and their festival on the Onion's A.V. Club website.

A.V. Club: Animation is a ridiculously painstaking process. What kind of person does it take to be an animator? 

Alexander Stewart: That’s a good assessment. Animation is extremely tedious, time consuming, and exhausting in terms of inspiration. In general, a 3-to-4-minute short film, would take an artist a year or nine months to make. So you need either to be crazy, or else mind-bogglingly patient to be an animator. You’re not depending on actors or a director of photography to make your film; you can sit down and, with the simplest tools, you control the ingredients involved to make exactly what you want to put in. It’s about expressing a singular artistic vision.

Don't forget to purchase tickets from the Eyeworks website and attend Eyeworks this Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 5 and 6, at DePaul's CDM Theater downtown!  We all love Eyeworks, and we're very grateful that Lilli and Alexander have held it at DePaul for its first two years.  

Cameraless Animations

The Experimental Animation class has been working with 16mm filmstrips to create cameraless animations, a la Len Lye, Norman McLaren, or Stan Brakhage. Using drawing, scratching, painting, hole punching, spray paint, tape, glue, and other tools, we created some wild abstract animations. Then, the footage was transferred, edited and manipulated digtially. Some examples are below, and more are on our class Vimeo page.

Dan Kelly:

Anne Petrokubi:

Thomas Swanson (the amazing soundtrack to this film was created by hand-scratching lines into the sound area of the film, McLaren-style!)

Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation 2011

Lilli Carré and I are planning the 2011 Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation for Nov. 5 & 6. We'll be showing about 35 short animations, focusing on abstract animation and unconventional character animation. It's going to be held at the DePaul CDM Theater in 14 E. Jackson. Full details on our website.

Esthesia

Esthesia by Kyle Sullivan (Animation BA, 2010)

Experimental Animation: Found Object Project

There's some insanity going on in ANI356, the Experimental Animation class, this quarter. Here's a couple of pieces from the Found Object project, where we all collected fifty objects and animated them using replacement animation.

Ben Austin:

Katie Kapuza: