This last weekend marked the end of my amazing gig teaching animation at The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York. I had the opportunity to create something special with a small group of creative young people in a wonderful, “homey” environment, not too far from my new home up here.
The Project Identity: Open Studios class was the perfect platform for me to test out my theories about the Power of Drawing. We used our 10 week course period to learn a handful of important things: A batch of professional digital skills, How to work as a team, and How to shoot for the stars (and launch our space ship on time!)
Here’s an example of some of the things we learned in class: How to create animations on top of your own videos.
Our animation project was designed and crafted to serve a number of purposes for this class. It had to meet the goals of the program as well as the Teaching Staff and the directors of this ambitious arts program. They have made significant strides over the last few years serving the growing needs of the community up here in Sullivan County, NY, where I also reside. (We are both invested in providing the youth and adult population up here the cultural experiences they desire, and the critical skills they need for professional career development.)
As for myself, I believe Drawing is one of the most important skills for deeper cognitive development. It clearly opens a pathway to learning about complicated concepts, as any adult understands when examining instructions on how to build something. But as a way to bring a group of people together to work as a “Team” in-itself, that is something I continually work to understand through my workshops. Harnessing the power of communal activities and directing it towards a purpose, such as using it as the motivator behind the learning difficult software skills, or reaching a difficult communal goal like getting our animation into a film festival up here called the “TSTS” (Too Short To Suck) Film Festival. That was one of my goals for this experience right out of the gate.
And… this is something we DID in flying fashion with our 2-minute animated film “A Very Short History of Cats Chasing Mice”.
