Anime Appreciation Characters Part 2

Here are some of the students' animations. Above is Nancy's "Levazul".

Although the animations are fairly basic, the students learned the fundamentals of animation and gained an appreciation for how much effort goes into making their favorite animated movies and television shows. Click the following links to see more examples:

Di's "Baga"

Caleb's "Juggler"

Brandi's "Twilight"

Anime Appreciation Characters Part 1

Here we see some of the students creations. Several students also endeavored to draw characters in Photoshop using the Wacom tablet, and some used Photoshop to animate them... Which we'll see in an upcoming blog post.

Design Your Own Pokemon-esque Character Project

This fall, students in the digital studio's Anime Appreciation class learned the basics of Adobe Illustrator by creating Pokemon-esque characters. We designed pre-made eyes, ears, noses, mouths and bodies, which the students copied and pasted together. Advanced students were encouraged to try their hand at editing the existing pieces and creating their own parts.

The following week, students were encouraged to import their characters into Photoshop and use its animation feature to create simple GIF animations. We will post some examples shortly.

Worldly Potential

Heather not only wrote, directed and edited the video, she wrote the song, sang and played guitar, and recorded it in the MCG digital studio. Not bad for a girl entering the 9th grade this year, eh?

Sanskrit

CAPA student Isaac came up with the idea for making "the ultimate foreign film," paying homage to The Red Balloon. It ended up being pure comedy, but that's the beauty of being your own director and producer. The video stars the one and only Diego Mendoza, and features some out-takes and bloopers. Enjoy.

Letters to God

David is one of our regular students during the school year, and it was great to have him in class this summer. He absolutely worked his butt off to create this video. Every frame in this animation was individually created in Photoshop, then imported into Adobe Premiere. The song Letters to God is by Box Car Racer.

Some Random Person's Revenge

Diego's video started out as a silent film, but he let Cole create a remix of sorts, which is what you see here. The song is Deja Vu, composed by Takeharu Ishimoto and sung by Joanna Koike, taken from The World Ends With You soundtrack.

One Day - Drew & Srik

Drew and Srik teamed up for an avant garde, stop-motion animation. It features Korean guitar wizard Zack Kim playing the theme from The Simpsons.

Lebron James

Just like the MCG digital studio's coordinator, Srik is a big basketball fan. He worked tirelessly to compile this fan video dedicated to his favorite player, Lebron James.

You Can't See Me

Jada comes to us from the nearby community of Homestead. A student we wouldn't ordinarily have during the school year, it was a pleasure to work with Jada this summer. Her video showcases her favorite wrester/rapper, John Cena.

Eerie Floating

Kevin is one of the few kids that come to MCG from the neighborhood where it started. It's a shame in that Kevin has an great personality, a strong creative drive and some God-given talent, just like MCG's founder, Bill Strickland. Kevin focused primarily on music this summer, but also delved into Photoshop to create an image to go with each of his compositions. Here is one example called Eerie Floating.

Dance

Juan comes back to visit Pittsburgh every summer from his home in the Pacific Northwest, and this summer he spent most of his days at MCG. His video uses a green screen for background special effects, and features music he created in Sony Acid, plus a cast of students from various studios.

Crestfield Camp

Hollywood has the Coen Brothers, we have the Daniel and Nicholas. The boys went to Crestfield Camp for one week this summer, and each of them documented their experience.

3,2,1... Podcast!

Welcome to the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild digital studio's blog. We've currently just finished our summer studio session where the students created audio and video projects. Some of them are truly amazing.

Stay tuned for the videos.