Drawn Animations
The Teacher
Trena Noval, Artist-in-Residence
Peralta Elementary School, Oakland, CA
As an artist-in-residence at Peralta Elementary School, Trena has focused on arts integration and video projects exploring themes of community and environmental stewardship. William Kentridge has served as a consistent source of inspiration for her work with students. Trena also teaches at Mills College, Graduate School of Education and is a digital video artist.
William Kentridge. 9 Drawings for Projection (1989–2003), 2005. Copyright and courtesy of William Kentridge.
I am a digital media/video artist-in-residence at the Peralta Elementary School in Oakland, CA. When I started working at Peralta about five years ago, one of the first projects I did was with a fourth-grade class. We created drawn animations about topics the students were studying in their Social Studies and Science classes. The first project was inspired by the drawn animations of William Kentridge, which my fellow artist-in-residence Ellen Oppenheimer and I had seen in the SFMoMA media gallery. We were so excited by the layering of images created with charcoal on paper: how the erased lines were still visible like shadows of the previous motion or movement, like ghosts; the “messiness” of how he worked with the media; and the mood that came across in the work. Though he was working with very simple, accessible materials, he was nonetheless able to create moving and powerful visual images.
In collaboration with Kelly Rozario, the fourth-grade teacher, we decided to tackle the study of California volcanic land forms, specifically Mt. Shasta in Northern California. We wanted the students to: 1) think about the geological history and science of Mt. Shasta, 2) explore a Native American California legend about how this volcanic mountain came to be, and 3) learn some simple drawing techniques and skills. We were looking for a simple way to create a drawn animation. We wanted to create something in a single day with imagery that had an antiquated look and feel.
William Kentridge. Tide Table, 2003. Production stills; 35mm animated film transferred to video, 8:50 min. Copyright and courtesy of William Kentridge.
We used excerpts of Kentridge animations to study how this kind of drawn technique could work for us, including excerpts from his animated film, Tide Table (2003). Our first drawn animation was titled The Great Chief Sky Spirit: The Mt. Shasta Story, after the Native American legend of Mt. Shasta.
Drawn animation created by Kelly Rozario’s 4th grade class, 2007, in collaboration with artists Trena Noval and Ellen Oppenheimer, tells the story of how Mt Shasta in California was formed through a native legend. (tnoval via YouTube)
After our first animation, we made additional drawn ones, but started to use a whiteboard and expo makers. This technique is different from the look and feel of Kentridge’s animations, but we have continued to use him as a model to show students how artists use animation to talk about their ideas and understand the world they live in. Some of our more recent whiteboard animations are The Yosemite Valley Story and Things that Spin…in our world. As artists, my students and I have been inspired by Kentridge’s work in numerous ways and are always seeing new things and new approaches to the work we do in relation to his own.
Drawn animation of the geological development of Yosemite Valley created by Kelly Rozario and her 4th grade class in collaboration with artists Trena Noval and Whitney Gardner at Peralta Elementary School in Oakland, CA, 2009. (tnoval via YouTube)
White board drawn animation about things that spin in our world. Created by Peralta Elementary School 2nd graders with teacher Anne Larsen and artists Trena Noval and Elizabeth Dolbec Oliveras. Spring 2010, Oakland, California. (tnoval via YouTube)
This is a wonderful project. As a perspective art educator I had a professor who had us create a stop motion lesson plan. It was difficult for me to figure out how to make such an ellaborate plan, which invloved pupppets and a set, work in a classroom. This is such a wonderful solution. As well as intergrating another subject like this wonderful example did, you can teach your students about the origins of animation and stop motion art.