This is a course demonstrating and exploring the basic techniques of Stop-Motion Puppet Animation, with the intent to provide students with hands-on creative experience in learning the potentials of the medium, and an introduction to filmic language. Studio exercises strengthen individual technical skills in basic armature construction and model making, animating pose-to-pose movement, the basic walk, expressions and gestures, clay animation with lip-sync, set construction and lighting for three-dimensional animation. Basic sound recording, mixing and editing are also covered. Conceptual skills are exercised through exploring intent, storytelling, storyboarding, editorial concepts, character performance, art direction, and basic sound design. This class is based on process and experimentation. It is meant to provide a strong foundation in the basics of stop-motion animation filmmaking, as well as the confidence to experiment further in one's future work. The idea is to enjoy the process by understanding it; control is born of experimentation and experience. This is a one semester class repeated in the spring.

Estimated Cost of Materials Cost: $40.00

Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register. Preference is given to FAV Students. Second preference given to Illustration Students.

Elective

Building on skills learned in the Intro Stop-motion Animation class, students will develop and produce one short stop-motion animation for professional portfolio and public screening. This course will provide students the opportunity to focus on particular issues of stop-motion animation and explore more advanced production techniques and processes. The course emphasizes art direction and project development. Students are encouraged to experiment with individual style and techniques of armature and set building, lighting, special effects and camera techniques. Weekly exercises are designed to strengthen students' conceptual and animation skills. In addition, a wide range of short films are screened to provide creative stimulus and demonstrate a variety of aesthetic and technical approaches.

Estimated Materials Cost: $300.00

Department permission is required to register for this course; this course is not available via web registration. Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Elective

This is a course demonstrating and exploring the basic techniques of Stop-Motion Puppet Animation, with the intent to provide students with hands-on creative experience in learning the potentials of the medium, and an introduction to filmic language. Studio exercises strengthen individual technical skills in basic armature construction and model making, animating pose-to-pose movement, the basic walk, expressions and gestures, clay animation with lip-sync, set construction and lighting for three-dimensional animation. Basic sound recording, mixing and editing are also covered. Conceptual skills are exercised through exploring intent, storytelling, storyboarding, editorial concepts, character performance, art direction, and basic sound design. This class is based on process and experimentation. It is meant to provide a strong foundation in the basics of stop-motion animation filmmaking, as well as the confidence to experiment further in one's future work. The idea is to enjoy the process by understanding it; control is born of experimentation and experience. This is a one semester class repeated in the spring.

Estimated Cost of Materials Cost: $40.00

Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register. Preference is given to FAV Students. Second preference given to Illustration Students.

Elective

Experimental Filmmaking has as much in common with song and sculpture as it does with cinema, and stresses process over script. The course is designed as a hands-on production experience where visual and audial ideas can be tested, combined, discarded, manipulated, investigated. Emphasis is placed on the unique properties of 16mm film as aesthetic material, as well as on the time-based conceptual potential of digital media. The course includes a brief overview of the techniques, theory, language, and history of Experimental Cinema.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Deposit: $150.00

Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Elective

Early photographic technology was often employed to visually manifest ideas of memory, stasis, and preservation - examples include post mortem photography, psychicones (attempts to visualize the soul on photographic plates), spirit photography, and other techniques unique to optical and photochemical technology. Even today, with the ubiquity of personal phone cameras, capturing images of people, places, things, still orbits the idea of preserving essence in the form of image. Animation, on the other hand, has always been about creating the illusion of life from static images, through ever-changing forms of photographic and imaging technology. In Animating Memento Mori, we will explore the contradictions and tensions between ideas of stasis, motion, and the illusion of movement, through animation and photographic practices employed outside of a studio setting. 
 

Department permission is required to register for this course; this course is not available via web registration. Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Elective

Early photographic technology was often employed to visually manifest ideas of memory, stasis, and preservation - examples include post mortem photography, psychicones (attempts to visualize the soul on photographic plates), spirit photography, and other techniques unique to optical and photochemical technology. Even today, with the ubiquity of personal phone cameras, capturing images of people, places, things, still orbits the idea of preserving essence in the form of image. Animation, on the other hand, has always been about creating the illusion of life from static images, through ever-changing forms of photographic and imaging technology. In Animating Memento Mori, we will explore the contradictions and tensions between ideas of stasis, motion, and the illusion of movement, through animation and photographic practices employed outside of a studio setting. 
 

Department permission is required to register for this course; this course is not available via web registration. Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Elective