A gust of wind blowing through a tree. A dog trotting down a path. A dancer swaying to a musical beat. These motions, and more, have inspired students to explore movement in the context of the Program in Visual Arts course “Digital Animation.” In this popular class, students examine, design and produce motion while learning a variety of analog and digital techniques from Lecturer in Visual Arts Tim Szetela.
Video Transcript
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Tim Szetela, Lecturer in Visual Arts:
I was drawn to animation because of its potential to mix in so many different forms of visual arts, things like photography, drawing, painting, sculpture. With these digital tools, digital software, and programming and code, all of these things could mix together. But also because it’s this constantly experimental, evolving form with regards to creativity and with regards to technology.
Wendi Yan, Program in Visual Arts student, Class of 2023:
Animation has a power of relating to a wide audience and also allowing the creator’s imagination to go wild.
[muffled background conversation in the class]Tim Szetela:
So I start every animation class by describing animation as the production, design, and study of motion. So we focus on motion. That’s something that everyone can kind of connect to instantly. We go around the room and name a favorite motion. Some people might mention like how their dog walks or how kind of wind blows through a tree. And that’s where I always wanna start because it’s something that’s immediately relatable. And then that’s something that students can then explore in animation. So the first half of the semester, we look at a lot of different films, animators that draw on paper or paint or use sand, but also animators that use all sorts of different digital software, or mixing these older analog forms of animation with these kind of constantly changing digital forms. In the second half of the semester, students focus on developing a short film of their own design.
Jemima O. Williams, Program in Visual Arts student, Class of 2023:
I liked rotoscoping the most ’cause I just really enjoy animating dancing. I think it’s really fun and it’s a way of animation that I had never known was accessible before.
Tim Szetela:
By the end of the semester, students will have completed a one to three-minute short film and we have a screening in the Jimmy Stewart Gallery in the first floor of 185 Nassau.
Jemima O. Williams:
My home is very important to me so I decided to combine the two by being inspired by the London underground trains and also dancing. So it’s a train dancing animation.
Tim Szetela:
Another place that students create animation is part of the program in Visual Arts. Students will make a short film as a junior and as a senior and it’s a chance to work longer on a project.
Wendi Yan:
Tim was my advisor for my senior project where we had weekly meetings talking about my film and also all the other smaller projects that will happen in my show and how they can all go together. This animation film called “Tale of the Mammoth Goddess” is the main piece of the show. It’s about a resurrected mammoth. I use game engine to make all of my animations and specifically, I use Unreal engine where big games like Fortnite was made. I like when animations use the imaginative medium to discuss more deeper questions.
Luke Shannon, Program in Visual Arts student, Class of 2024:
I chose animation to work with Tim specifically because he does a lot of really cool work with programmatic animation and generative art. So these are created by creating a programmatic animation and then laser cutting every frame of the animation into wood or acrylic, and then photographing each one of those sequentially to make an animation, a stop motion animation.
Tim Szetela:
It’s been exciting to see interest in animation grow. More and more students want to take the class and also more and more students that are creating kind of interesting animation in the class and also outside of it in context of other coursework. I had a student that is currently working at a video game company. I also had a student who is currently working at NASA as an animator. One of the festivals that students have screened a lot in and won prizes in is New Jersey’s local Thomas Edison Film Festival and also the New Jersey Young Filmmakers Festival. So it’s been neat to see students kind of screen there and win prizes there and internationally as well. Princeton students, they’re really focused and they thrive in these spaces where they can combine creative and technical skills. So it’s really exciting to see the ideas, the techniques, the applications, the experiments they come up with in context of this class.
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