Induction Activities - Whiteboard Animation & Pinhole Cameras

As part of my induction week before starting my Multimedia course, I did a couple of group based activities to get into the swing of things, which helped learn skills as well as being fun!


The first activity I did was a group whiteboard animation. I have done a lot of stop motion animation previously in my college course, but had forgotten how laborious the process can be. :) However, it was a fun exercise to do with exciting outcomes and I look forward to doing more animation in the coming months!

This animation by Kristofer Ström is called Minilogue/Hitchhiker's Choice and was one we looked at before producing our short animations. I really liked how the animator has shown drawings being altered and transformed into each other, as well as the way he uses his hands to give an illusion of him pulling his drawings away from the board.




 
The second activity we did a day later was producing a pinhole camera from a 500ml can. To do this, I cut the top off the can; made a totally blacked out lid using paper and tape; made a pinhole in the side of the can; and made a simple shutter over this hole using a black piece of tape.

Here is my finished camera! :D

Once this camera was produced, I went into the dark room and curved photographic paper around the inside of my 500ml can pinhole camera. (Doing this, making sure the shiny, sensitive side was facing away from the surface of the can, and that the gap in my paper was where my pinhole was! Very important stuff.)

I then replaced the lid and shutter tape and went out into the Arboretum to take a quick photo. To do this I placed the camera on a sturdy surface (this happened to be a bin) and opened the shutter (removed tape from pinhole to be precise) for approximately 11-12 seconds, before replacing the shutter. This had exposed my paper to the image. Now it was ready to develop!

This meant going back into the dark room (making sure not to remove the lid at any point, of course) and placing the paper into developer, stop, fixer and water. My negative image was now printed.

After this I quickly dried my negative image under a hand dryer before scanning it into Photoshop, where I inverted it and altered the brightness and contrast until I was satisfied with its quality.

Here is my finished outcome. Despite the apparent chemical marks, not too bad for a first attempt, yes? :)