The experimenta.l. animation lab at the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology (BAHT) at the University of Texas at Dallas is now happy to partner with the Aardman Academy.
Our lab is a space for creative research and critical practices in animation that welcomes the participation of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and national and international collaborators. We encourage experimentation via a variety of animation techniques, tools, and interfaces.
Opportunities related to our partnership with the Aardman Academy welcome and include students from our entire school through uniquely tailored events. Students from experimental animation and stop-motion classes will particularly benefit from personal feedback from professionals on the Aardman team. In our school, we believe that if you can imagine it, we can make it. Our lab and studio culture blends art, technology, design, engineering, science, and the humanities to create an environment rich with possibilities.
Collaboration is the heart of our school and Animation & Games program, as exemplified in this exciting partnership with the Aardman Academy.
Updates and open events related to the partnership will be updated here and on social media. Stay tuned!
Planning: During class on January 23rd, I volunteered to present a workshop on rotoscoping for our lab on February 3rd. With this limited time, I had to develop a simple idea that the lab members could participate and complete under 1 ½ hours. I spoke with Dr. Veras a few times and we decided on simple tools to use: filming equipment, Photoshop, After Effects, and a drawing tablet. For the reference footage, I found a film on my phone of a musical jewelry box from Neha’s China and Crystal, my family’s store. I wanted to have the lab members draw an object instead of a portrait since portraits can vary in style quite a bit. I took the 23 seconds of film and cut the time down to a 3-second loop. I then took the cut film and imported it into photoshop, converting the frames into 36 layers to split among 12 members. I labeled each consistently in accordance with sequence and then split them into 12 different photoshop files. I uploaded these files to Box to share with our members, along with an excel sheet to assign the files, and a short list of instructions on how to complete each file. The instructions went along the lines of, “keep drawings on a separate layer, use the assigned colors only, and do not draw the background”. I accompanied my presentation with a brief PowerPoint lecture so I could give detailed instructions on the process of importing, exporting, and organizing files for this type of animation.
What did I learn? Students will not strictly follow directions and they will do their own thing for an assignment that is not graded. Looking at the final product, however, I think that this rebellion was beneficial to our final piece. Students should have fun in the lab, experimenting and trying new things. It is funny because one student’s submission that went totally against all the rules ended up adding a sense of humor, charm, and eye-catching quality to our animation. It highlighted the fact that this is student-made artwork, so you are combining many different personalities and skill levels into one output animation. The organization was KEY to managing this project with multiple participants. I was able to export the file so easily once everyone submitted their section. However, even with organization, I need to keep my files accessible and not have too many folders or instructions. With such a short time to create, I must make my lecture brief and to the point so instruction is clear.
What am I going to do next? Another workshop idea I have still falls under the method of rotoscoping. However, I would like to have it done individually with a focus on animating fluids – such as water dripping or bubbles. There is lots of freedom with animating water, and I think it is a wonderful way to study natural movements. I would incorporate texts and images from Joseph Gillard’s Elemental Magic because it was an eye-opening and influential reading in my own animation practice.
Notes for the future: I should use a tripod to maintain stability because you can see the background jump when the dinosaur pops up with the original background. I think it would engage students more if they could film their own references, but because I was more focused on technique, I did the right thing by filming my own reference to use in the group project. If I do another group project, I should limit each member to drawing only two frames of animation so we can get it done during our lab. Overall, I genuinely think that the experimenta.l. lab members did a wonderful job, and I would call this workshop a success. I was able to show students a new technique, and we ended with a quirky animated loop.
Dr. Rainer Schulte, Director of the Center for Translation Studies, conceived the project as a multidisciplinary collaboration featuring new poetic visions for Arthur Rimbaud’s sonnet “Voyelles,” written in 1871.
The collaborative project gathered choreography, animation, music, and poetry to demonstrate the poem’s different poetic translations and visual interpretations. According to Dr. Schulte, “Rimbaud revolutionized the forms of poetic expressions. A strange title for a poem: Voyelles. The title does not suggest a topic or a subject. Words are made of vowels. Rimbaud goes to the beginning of language. The power resides in the vowels and letters that the poem is made Vowels are signs and sounds that build a word. Rimbaud wants to live with each individual vowel since the vowels open new vistas of how to enter the poem and live inside the walls of the poem.”
Dr. Christine Veras created the animations for the project in the Experimental Animation Lab. For her, this collaboration “extends my research into a sensorial collaboration using poetry, sound, dance, and animation. In exploring these bridges between technology, performance, and materiality, I continue my creative investigation as visual and sensory translations. This process of creative research through experimentation encourages and facilitates the recombination of old, new, and still emerging technologies. Such connections are only possible by knowing the past and understanding the applications and implications of animation’s more experimental and material processes. The results of such possibilities invite viewers to experience animation beyond traditional narrative formats.” See below a few behind-the-scenes images of the animation:
The project will be screened at the Open House event at the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology on October 7, 2022. It features the choreography of Michelle Hanlon, sound effects by Kevin Hanlon, editing by Cathrin Yoder, animation by Christine Veras with assistance from Philip Martin, narration by Kathy Lingo, and coordination by Rainer Schulte.
The project will Premiere on October 20, 2022, at the ATC Gallery space at 5 pm.
Impressions after the event “Conversations About the Use of AI in Art Practice” April 15, 2022 1 to 2:30 pm Online
Written by Gizem Oktay
experimenta.l. Automata, coined after the collaboration between two research labs of ATEC, experimenta.l. and Creative Automata, had its first public event on using AI-based techniques in art practice. The event took place on April 15, 2022, and brought together a diverse set of presenters and participants in a lively discussion about state-of-the-art AI tools and how they are utilized in artistic spaces.
Slide from Marcelo Rocha’s presentation
The group of presenters was comprised of four students, along with the directors of the research labs, Drs. Paul Fishwick and Christine Veras. The first to present was Marcelo Rocha, an undergraduate student with a major in Animation, with the presentation titled “Automated Motion Paintings and Animation Using Ebsynth.” The program introduced in his presentation is an interface used to style transfer a static image onto a moving image. Marcelo showed examples from his Capstone animation project, “A Decree From the Stars,” with captivating examples of how Ebsynth was used to style transfer.
Ebsynth was also a part of the workshops given by the research assistant Gizem Oktay, which showed students at the Experimental Animation Lab how to use both AI-based and non-AI-based tools. These included Ebsynth and RunwayML, an interface that allows its users to train neural networks without needing coding knowledge. More information about these workshops can be found here.
Slide from Nathan Shoeck’s presentation
The second presentation, titled “AI’s Perception in Art,” was done by Nathan Schoeck, a first-year Applied Cognition & Neuroscience MS student whose topic was a deep dive into two models — CLIP and VQGAN— that he used for his artworks. By comparing the way human memory works to that of a network, Nathan drew connective lines between the workings of these two ‘prediction machines’, namely the human brain and the neural network.
Still from Jiatong Yao’s presentation
The third presentation of the event, titled “NeRFs Driven Art Practice”, was done by Jiatong (Tong) Yao, a first-year Computer Science MS student. Tong’s topic was on one of the latest neural network models, Neural Radiance Field (NeRF), which can create 3D objects based on a given text prompt. Through the narrative of what the model provided for her art practice, Tong described how the model works, along with other possibilities in the realm of 3D-object-based generation and how they can be used in real-time with body tracking technologies.
Still from Gizem Oktay’s presentation
The last presentation was done by Gizem Oktay, research assistant of Dr. Veras and a part of the experimenta.l. Automata collaboration since its beginning. Inspired by her year-long research project titled Corporeal Crossings, Gizem’s presentation focused on using two neural network models, a text-to-image operator called CLIP and a style transfer model called StyleGAN2. The models were used to create hybrid bodies composed of human and animal parts. Gizem’s presentation included still images and animations made with these models and interactive examples of how the visual outputs of models could be activated by audience participation.
After the presentations, participants were invited to join the discussion, ask questions, and consider possible future steps towards such conversations, processes, and future collaborations. We had a lively discussion about the philosophy of AI, how the neural network interprets abstract concepts like metaphor and perception, and what the models can provide the artists with in terms of affordances. Among the questions was whether the neural network was operating from an emotive place like humans do, which included responses from all student presenters regarding how they approached the agency of AI in the work they presented. Another topic touched upon was the issue of algorithmic bias and how artists can aid in the process of creating ethical and inclusive algorithms.
With over thirty participants, including academics from multiple disciplines, practitioners, and artists, “Conversations About the Use of AI in Art Practice” opened up a space for dialogue on how the use of artificial intelligence is in exchange with the artistic practice, questioning the role of human and the ever-increasing role of “intelligent” tools in the creative process, as well as our role in the process. The team of experimenta.l. Automata is excited to invite interested students and faculty in UT Dallas and beyond to make the area of AI Art more inclusive.
We thank everyone who took the time to attend the event, and we hope to have more such initiatives and conversations in the future.
Guido Devadder is an experimental animator from Belgium. He holds a MA in Literature (KU Leuven) and Visual Arts – Graphic Storytelling (LUCA School of Arts). He co-founded graphic narrative anthology Ink (Oogachtend Publishing) and published in numerous other magazines and comics anthologies in Belgium and the Netherlands. Gradually, his focus shifted to experimental animation, where he investigates hybrids of old and new media. Besides working with analog film, his practice concentrates mostly on combinations between pre-cinema and digital animation. His short film Status Quontinuum won the Audience Favorite Award at the ESMoA Video Art + Film Festival in 2021.
Devadder is affiliated with the Animation department at LUCA School of Arts (Campus Sint-Lukas Brussels) since 2001. He currently teaches Image Research and Drawing and is working on a practice-based Ph.D. entitled From Post-cinema to Pre-cinema and Back: Media Archaeology of Loop Animation.
In this talk, Devadder will introduce two complementary perspectives: the evolution of the shutter in the 19th and early 20th century (framing time) and on the other hand the contemporary approaches, which make it possible to transgress the limitations of the frame in prototypical film (unframing time). He will address the animated machines and also talk about direct/drawn-on-film animation.
The workshop invited students to join in a socially engaged collaborative effort in depicting a happy representation of the future with stories of hope, resilience, and inspiration during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current situation around the world has shattered many dreams and aspirations. By demonstrating a reciprocal relationship between artistic production and social and political mechanisms, the participatory nature of narrative storytelling, empathy, and direct dialog has become essential in bringing those discussions to the forefront. This workshop utilized the stop-motion animation technique to highlight the importance of mental health and well-being and demonstrated how socially engaged art can act as a communal vehicle for advocacy, intervention, and healing. The duration of the workshop was four weeks, with the first week focusing on idea generation, sketching the puppet, constructing the armature of the puppet, and creating the body mass.
The second week concentrated on sculpting the face with Sculpey.
The third week centered around embellishing the puppet by sewing the attire and other accessories, hairstyling, defining facial features, etc.
The fourth week concentrated on creating stop-motion walk-cycles for each of the puppets using DragonFrame.
I had a lot of fun teaching students to design stop-motion animation puppets using everyday materials such as wood, wire, screws, nuts, and bolts, and sparking their creativity in a different way. The studio has been equipped with the latest technological tools for capturing high-resolution frames for the animation using DragonFrame. Dr. Veras has been supportive in designing this workshop and getting the supplies for students to use for that purpose. Phillip Martin Carl (Building Services Coordinator) was super helpful in carving the wood pieces for the students and having them ready to be used. The goal was to introduce the technique of stop-motion animation to the students and have them explore the medium in the experimenta.L animation lab in the Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication department at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Facilitator: Dr. Christine Veras Semester: Fall 2021
Description: We have started experimenta.l.! Our sand animation exquisite corpse was launched today. Drop by the lab (in person) to draw in the sand your contribution. The station name is PETROV, and the login information and steps to continue the animation follow below:
Guidelines/Instructions:
1. LOGIN: experimenta.l. 2. PASSWORD: animate 3. Launch the Dragonframesoftware. Click open in the sand project saved on the desktop. 4. Play the animation and continue the drawing from where it was left. 5. In Dragonframe when pressing ENTER you will capture a frame. Wait for the capturing sound to be complete and continue to change the image, frame by frame. 6. Remember to turn on both lights (on the side of the table) and to turn off the fluorescent light of the room. Please do not move or change the position of the light.
Hopefully, by Halloween time we will have a long animated spooky sand animation. If you have questions about this project or would like to participate and access the lab, leave a message here.
IMPORTANT: This is straight ahead animation and not keyframe animation. You can only move forward and once a drawing is changed you cannot go back.
Participants: Norman Cox, Dr. Ann Wu, Kirstin Schmidt-Stevens, Danny Laboda, Benjamin Wu, Bryce Sheehan, Philip Martin, Eesha Muddasani, Hamida Khatri, Gizem Okaty, Arianna Meisetschlaeger, Zack Nguyen, Martin Cho, Dr. Christine Veras.
Description: Hello experimenta.l., Gizem Oktay is facilitating a series of workshops that will start next week, called Collective Emergence with GAN-1st Session. Lab participants are welcome to attend in person (limited to 10 people) and online/remotely through Teams.
For the first portion of the workshop, we will use EbSynth to create a stylized movie sequence of our choosing. Here is what you need to do before the workshop: What would be your choice of movie to stylize? It can be a personal favorite, a one that you thought of working well as an animation, or simply a fun one!
Choose your scene. Make sure that the scene you chose does not change drastically and do not introduce a new character, object, or a different scene during the timeframe of your choosing. Make sure the scene you chose is no longer than five seconds! (Remember rule number 2. Make sure the scene doesn’t change in these ten seconds.)
Choose keyframes from the sequence to paint over in the workshop. (You can image sequence as PNG and pick out 2-3 keyframes to paint over).
If you are painting over a character, make sure one of your keyframes is one that fully shows the face from the front. Green screen rule: Your video does not have to be green screen, that being said, it would make your job easier if it were, as some masking might be required).
Watch this video for preparation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RLtHuu5jV4
Registering Movement -Collective Emergence: Here is your HOW TO NOT for the workshop on Tuesday. I wanted to share an example with you guys so you better understand the importance of painting over keyframes (I mean, “key” keyframes). Sorry for the bad quality of the video! I’ll show the main version on Tuesday.
Dates: TBA Semester: Fall 2021 – 1stSession (09/21) 2ndSession (09/28)
Participants: Week 1: Martin Cho, Bryce Alexander Sheehan, Danny Elizabeth Laboda, Dr. Christine Veras, Eesha Muddasani, Xochitl Juarez.
