education

THE TALE OF THE RAT THAT WROTE

Screening & Workshop
Friday 17th @ The Nerve Centre

Making an animation is always good fun, especially if the workshop is taken by the creator of the stunning puppet animation The Tale of the Rat that Wrote. Be inspired as you get to work beside the experienced Billy O'Brien on a short animation sequence. These workshops are ideal for pupils of all ages.

Before You Go
When you see an animation in the cinema, like The Tale of the Rat that Wrote, it is the result of thousands of frames of individual drawings or model movements.

Practice making pictures move by making a flick book.

1. Draw a person or an animal in the back page, bottom right-hand corner of an exercise book. Make it as simple as you can Ð stick figures are fine.
2. Repeat the drawing in the bottom corner of the next right-hand page, only draw it slightly differently, as if the figure is about to do something, like swing a golf club, or jump off a diving board.
3. Keep on drawing the figure on every following right-hand corner, changing the movements only slightly until it has completed its task on the final page. You should have filled each right-hand corner with a drawing that looks slightly different than the last one.
4. When you flick the pages, you should see your character coming to life. You have just made your first animation!

If you think it took you a long time to finish that last task, think how long it takes to make an animation like The Tale of the Rat that Wrote. Ask animator Billy O'Brien how long it took to make the film, and how many people worked on it - you might be surprised!

Story
Now think of a story that you would like to make into an animation. It could be a version of a good book you have read, or a film you have enjoyed recently, or you could make up an entirely new story. Write down a brief description of the story, then divide each main event into a separate section, or scene.

Storyboards
In order to make an animation easier to film, it is always made into a storyboard first. A storyboard is a series of drawings that explain the story in pictures. Each drawing depicts an individual section, or scene, of the animation so that the animator can look at the storyboard to see how a particular section or scene should look like.

It's easy to make your own storyboard Ð simply draw six equal-sized squares onto A4 paper (like the ones below), and fill each of them with a scene from your story. When you have drawn your six pictures, it should be obvious to someone who doesn't know the story what it is about.

Now, if you're feeling ambitious, you can take one scene from your storyboard, and make another storyboard from it Ð each of your squares detailing how each shot in that scene will look. It is from a storyboard like this that animators draw each scene of an animation.

[If you would like to experiment with different styles of animation visit the worksheet on Animation Screenings, and book your seat at the screenings].