Gino Sofia

When I was a lot more younger my father would actually improvise bed time stories and would use a lamp and his hands to cast hand shadows onto the wall. This meshed with his oral storytelling introduced me to the media of shadow puppets and hand shadows.

Much like in the video “The Master of Shadow Puppets”, Zheng’an’s performance with shadow puppets and story telling made me think back to when my father would do it with his hands.

The first pre-cinema piece I’ll talk about would be the optical illusion toys that were relatively common in the mid 19th century. While a very early and rough concept through spinning the the toy it would cycle through 2 images, one on the front and one on the back. This would give the crude perception of motion and make the person spinning it think that the image is in motion.

The second pre-cinema piece would be the flipbooks, these became popular in the late 19th century and the very beginning of the 20th century. Just like the optical illusion toy from a couple of generations ago, this would utilize the rapid flipping of motion to trick people into thinking the pages were in motion. While the optical illusion toy allowed for 2 images, the flipbook alternative allowed for a longer motion given how many pages the booklet was.

Both essentially work the same, some what crude and early given animation wasn’t a staple yet but they used the same method of rapid motion to gain the illusion of movement.

Please tell us a bit about yourself. What is your name? Why did you pick this course? Is there a particular genre/era/type of animation you’re interested in learning more about? What is your major? What are your career goals? Include a few fun facts about yourself (hobbies? pets? favorite food?)

My name is Gino Sofia, I’m a student at BMCC studying animation and have aspired to be an animator since I was around 10 or 11. I picked this course through advisement and to grown my knowledge in animation in general. There is no one style I adhere to when it comes to animation but the two mediums I like are 3D CG, and traditional hand drawn animation, I’m primarily currently trying to focus on learning both. My major is Animation & Motion graphics. My career goals are to become a CG generalist, or at the very least a concept artist, storyboard artist, or key animator. A couple of fun facts about myself are that I like to draw and dedicate most of my time to digital art. I casually play games, a huge cat person and my favorite food is pasta.

Name an animated film or tv show that you like. Why do you think you like it?  Is it the characters, the animation techniques? Include this in the journal post. Research the studio/artist that created it as well as the date it was created and include this information in your post.

An animated film I really like and commonly find myself going back to pick through on how they did certain techniques is Zootopia. When I first saw it I found myself enamored with the characters and how the different animal types in the film interacted with the world and other animals of different sized too. Initially Zootopia is what got me into 3D animation and I found myself re-watching for the story and picking out parts of the animation that I could analyze and replicate in my own work. The animated film was made inhouse by Walt Disney Animation Studio, and story and designs were conceptualized from Bryon Howard, The film itself was released march 4th 2016.