Become Walt Disney!

The opening class will introduce sculpture as a medium and the transition from flat imagery to volume. The children will try to develop a screenplay of a cartoon about sculpture, volume, and the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, and draw a detailed breakdown for it.

The course members will engage in the production of a cartoon based on the screenplay developed during the previous session. All characters, images, and landscapes, executed using colored modelling clay, will be animated in front of the camera.

Together with the course instructors, the group will discuss the emergence of non-figurative art at the beginning of the twentieth century and will try to figure out the historic events that instigated this phenomenon. The practical block will include training in working with a new material—colored sand. 

During the fourth meeting, the group will produce another animation film, this time inspired by the pioneering abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky. The cartoon will be made using a special light table and colored sand.

Graphic arts, design, the synthesis of word and image, and the power of simple elements and colors will be the main issues of the session. The participants will also discuss the practice of Alexander Rodchenko, before sketching out a draft plot for the next film.

The third film completed by the course members will teach them how to use color paper and geometric forms in animation.

Participants will learn about the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the emergence of expressionism, and script an animation film in the Kirchner’s style.

Participants will produce an animation film in bright, strident colors, using acrylic paint, plasticine, and hard light.

World War I and the reception of warfare by the artistic community will form the core of this session. The participants will trace the history of the Dada movement and learn about its founding ideologist, the poet Tristan Tzara, try to create their own absurd poems, and think through a scenario of a Dada stylized cartoon movie.

The final class of the course is devoted to performance. Participants will script an animation film in which they will be the main actors. Each participant will think of their character’s costume and movements.