Last week was our first real session with Neil. We had the full period of arts together to get to know him, talk about some of his work, and read one of his short stories. At fifteen years old, Neil is still very much an imaginative young man. He explained to Helen and I the possibilities of dragons living in the sky and how the world surrounding him inspires fantastical ideas. There will be no shortage of interesting subject matter while working with him. After deciding to do a CaveDogs depiction of his story (about a boy in middle school discovering he has supernatural abilities) we sat down to lay the ground work. Neil had no shortage of ideas in how he would go about depicting the story. In fact, he had so many it was hard to keep up with him as he spouted out the methods he would use to work with the shadow puppets. He was quick to explain what would be done, but was less specific for how it would happen (planning, scale of materials, etc.). His interest seemed to devolve when it came to working with the materials, and was easily discouraged and distracted when he encountered a small problem. I believe in the future Helen and I will have to be especially attentive to making sure Neil considers the value of planning and patience (admittedly something many adolescents struggle with). Neil obviously has a clear image in his mind of what he wants to create, but (like many of us) is discouraged by the tedious work in the middle. Also, Neil seems to desire ownership to the creative process. When attempting to motivate and direct attention towards the task at hand he shied away further from the work. He does not want to be directed (but who does?). If we can get Neil to keep a positive attitude about what we are creating, I am confident the creative process will be very rewarding for all.
This was my first full day with my student, N. He brought his story that he wrote with him to see how we might adapt it to make a shadow play. He seemed pretty excited at the idea, too. I asked him if he would read the story to me, but he said that he doesn't really like to read, or that he can't read - I'm not entirely sure which - so I offered to read it for him - and aloud - which he seemed to enjoy. It is the story of a young teenage boy who discovers he has superpowers and so do many around him. Good vs. evil. Sibling rivalry. Damsels in distress. This one page story has it all. So we started talking about how we can make this in to shadow play and started with some cardboard cutouts, except N has grand schemes for this and while I don't want to rein in his creative spark, I do want to help him be a little more logical and methodical about what we are going to make, how we are going to make it, and how we are going to use the items. He seems to get ahead of himself a lot with his thoughts and it is hard for all of us, himself included, I think, to keep track of his thoughts, ideas, and how they may manifest in the three dimensional world. He goes off on tangents about minutia and then gets lost in that, forgetting where we started. I am even finding it a little frustrating and wouldn't mind some advice on how to communicate with him better, or at very least, how to let go of outcomes. I definitely want the experience to be enjoyable for my student as well as for myself, but am having a difficult time getting there.
And oh - so concerned with safety!! Having a learning disabled 15 year old buy wield an x-acto knife over corrugated cardboard is not for the feint of heart! I was even called out by my partner who, when I stressed safety again and again (and again... did I mention AGAIN?!) with an, "OK, MOM". That didn't feel real good. Where is the line between nagging and safety? I've had the personal experience of slicing myself badly with an x-acto blade when I was in art school and have been hyper-sensitive to safety issues in the studio ever since. I just don't want anyone to get hurt. So I feel like I spent a lot of time on the safety issue and like that detracted from everything else regarding the project.
I suggest that before you begin the hands activities, you could have a general group discussion about safety. You can ask them if they'll agree to play safe. Then if things do begin to spin out of control, you can say, "remember the agreements we made earlier today?" I don't know if this will work... it could help though. -Leah
We got Ethan back with us today! He was happy to jump right in to Angel’s already in progress film. Thank you Alice for suggesting the underwater city. I suppose that isn’t very far off from an underground city. It served as a helpful challenge, incorporating an underwater city into Angel’s story. This invited new scenes and events for Angel’s story. Now as far as I can tell, after the fish bowl gets tainted by chemicals, the janitor assumes the fish are all dead, so he flushes them down the toilet. This is a magical toilet that instead of emptying into a sewer; it serves as a water tunnel to Atlantis. In this city, they meet new characters and new challenges. Wonderful story!
So Ethan Illustrated some cityscapes and I cut them out for him. He Also drew and adorable fish. The fish characters were turned into “stick shadow puppets.” Ethan and Angel played with their puppets, the light, the sheets, and the shadows for their first times. I’m very excited.
The kids came back from their spring break pretty focused and ready to work on their projects. I was really happy with the progress we made with Corey. Corey was really focused and ready to work from the minute he came in. He sat down and we got out the storyboards and he was starting to develop the ideas from last time and actually drawing on the paper. He was getting really excited about his skit and Joe and I were pretty happy that he wanted to push his idea further without much prompting from us. He came up with the bird flying through the sky and into the mountains. I think he may have wanted him to fly into a cave, but he wasn’t sure how we could show that with shadows. We started talking about making props for when the bird is flying through the sky. We had a lot of fun in the supply closet trying to find stuff to make clouds with. Corey ended up finding some dowels and we also found some cotton stuffing and thread. We started taking pieces of the stuffing and tying it to the poles with the thread. After a while we kind of had this mobile looking thing with all these clouds attached to it. We put it in front of the light and Corey was so happy to see how cool it looked, they were pretty realistic looking clouds. I think making this prop for Corey’s sketch helped a lot with the creative process and he seemed like he was finally getting comfortable with what we were doing. He started to loosen up with us and do silly things in front of the camera. I’m looking forward to the next session where we can probably finish our props and work more on putting the sketch together and adding the sound effects that he wanted.
This past class with Angel was very productive. Once Angel arrived we sat down and got right to work. Last week we made several props out of cardboard. Due to the cardboard’s non-responsive nature, the props were difficult to cut out. Angel decided it would be better to remake props out of construction paper. Together we drew an assortment of fish, octopi monsters, and seaweed. Angel mostly drew each character, and Lindsay and I cut the props out. Overall we probably made approximately fifteen props. Angel was very happy with the final outcome. He was glad we made extras because “now we have the choice to decide which fish look better than others while working with the light and shadow”.
This coming class Angel wants to start experimenting with light and shadow again. Last class we also discussed making some sort of dialogue for the performance. Angel seemed a little apprehensive and may want to have the play without any dialogue, possibly just music. I think we’ll figure out all of the extra details this coming class and leave rehearsing the play for the remainder of the semester. Also our group still doesn’t know if we’ll be working with Ethan. Angel wants to but unfortunately Ethan has been absent for the past few classes. Ethan has previously drawn city buildings and architecture. If he decides to work with us maybe we can somehow incorporate an under water city into our sea story.
During our last field work, Angel, Lauren and I continued to make props for the shadow play. This time we decided to work with construction paper to see how that holds up. Despite Ethan not being there again, Angel seemed very focused. We all drew and cut out as many different props as we could so we could see which ones we liked best and which ones worked best behind the screen. I believe Angel enjoys drawing the characters the most; he drew the fish and the monster. At one point he began to trail off and become more interested in telling us about one of his stories, but this time we were able to use that to get him more excited about what we were doing. He started talking about going to the beach and how he saw a horseshoe crab. I told him I had never seen one, so I asked him to draw it for me so I could have a better idea of what he was talking about. He drew it from all angles, a top view, bottom view and a side view. He was so into the horseshoe crab that I asked if he wanted to incorporate that character into the shadow play that we were doing. We also got him to think about other props we needed besides just the characters. I believe that during this class we made a lot of progress and were able to keep him focused more successfully than the previous times. For next class I think we will work on dialogue and maybe play around with the light and screen to see what will work best.
Thankfully our Cory was there this time, and surprisingly excited to work. I was really concerned he would just revert back to playing with his phone again and the whole class would be a wash. He was however incredibly accommodating to new ideas and making them happen. When we first started working out the story to our play, he seemed reluctant to add any sort of complexity or for the story to have much progression. But it also appeared that after some time he had ruminated on it and had come back ready to work. (Not that it’s laborious work or anything).
He appeared to be really enjoying himself as well. I really didn’t expect the change around in his approach to it. Of course, there’s no way of really knowing what might have caused his reluctance. I’d, however, guess that after the initial description of what we were going to do he just needed some time to absorb it and feel like he could really contribute. So he was able to just take off with the ideas we had mentioned before. It was mostly him that decided to use the stick for the clouds, and to then put his previously cut out bird on a dowel as well.
We were cooking along great last time and got a lot accomplished. I had a feeling we should add to the story to make it more of a narrative. I kept trying to bring it up and asked questions about where the next part of the story should go and how it should resolve. Later though it appeared that since we had some changes in setting going on, and basically a main character, that we had enough for a poetic kind of short story rather than a strict narrative arc. Cory also came up with an idea to have our bird character find a cave to fly to so that felt like a satisfying ending.
Last Tuesday Tanagne, Laura and I began to work on the story for the shadow play. Our student decided that she wanted to go back to working with the Sonic ideas even though it wasn’t her own original character. She had asked if that was ok and we said yes because at the end of the day it was her idea that should be executed. Even though Sonic wasn’t her original character we helped her to come up with an original story.
She had brought a few pictures for reference but when she began talking about her ideas, which there were a lot of, they weren’t too focused. We had to ask her “What do you want that character to do?” or provide alternate ways to do a scene. I loved hearing her ideas and seeing where she was coming from in terms of what the characters are like from the TV show/video game.
In order to try to visualize what was going to happen, we decided to act the beginning of the scene out. This helped Tanagne really focus on what was going to happen and we wrote down our lines to try and remember what we were going to say. She remembered the scene better than I did. We decided that she was going to be Sonic and I was going to be her sidekick, Tails. Our plane crashes in the desert and there’s a sandstorm and we run into a pyramid for shelter. I loved acting with her and seeing her so animated. I’m looking forward to what we’re going to accomplish next week.
It was so great to finally start working with Tenagne on our shadow scenes. Before this class, we were preparing to build a scene around a dragon and a princess, but Tenagne changed her idea to a scene involving Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails, and a Mummy. Tenagne, Mikaela, and I fleshed out a scenario diligently since we were a little behind, and as we were playing around with dialogue and the setting everything seemed to fall in place.
Tenagne was energetic yet focused the entire class. She really likes the television show, so she was really motivated and engaged with creating our scene. We decided the premise will be that Sonic and Tails crash in the Egyptian desert. They survive, but the radio doesn’t work, and what’s worse is that a sandstorm is coming. Sonic and Tails take cover in a nearby pyramid, where they find themselves being caught in a booby trap (maybe walls closing in?) Will they survive?
We only got as far as the pyramid, but we have plans for the rest of the scene. Tenagne came up with thoughtful lines like “Is that a sandstorm, or is that a mirage?” She is a very expressive person and extremely enjoyable to work with. I can’t wait to start putting together costumes and building objects we will need for our scene. Next class, our goal will be to finish the dialogue for the first half, and then begin creating a pyramid.
This week with Jahred we continued with his narrative and actually got to making quite a number of the props. We made a list of what would be needed and set to cutting things out of cardboard with x-acto knives, carefully of course. Katie and I took Jahred to the computer lab with out list of props and looked up images to work off of, so we would now what to draw and cutout. We got pictures of a bird, a specific rifle, and a tank. The rest, like the grave stone and zombie head, we drew and cut from Jahred’s direction and sketchbook. He was pretty focused throughout the session, and full of energy. He was really interested in precision of his craft when cutting out the tank. I worked out the bird, and Katie cut out smaller versions of the gun, tank, and bird. We had decided to use people for the zombies and humans in the play, which meant we didn’t have to make them. It was a little tedious to use x-acto blades for cutting out the cardboard, we thought utility blades may have been more useful. Or maybe just new blades for the x-actos. By the end of the class, we had small versions of the bird, tank and gun, and larger cardboard versions of the bird and tank. We decided we liked the smaller bird more, but also that we would probably need a larger version of the rifle if someone was to hold it. We thought up what to work on for next time: the larger rifle, the zombie head, and the grave stone.
Last week was our first real session with Neil. We had the full period of arts together to get to know him, talk about some of his work, and read one of his short stories. At fifteen years old, Neil is still very much an imaginative young man. He explained to Helen and I the possibilities of dragons living in the sky and how the world surrounding him inspires fantastical ideas. There will be no shortage of interesting subject matter while working with him.
ReplyDeleteAfter deciding to do a CaveDogs depiction of his story (about a boy in middle school discovering he has supernatural abilities) we sat down to lay the ground work. Neil had no shortage of ideas in how he would go about depicting the story. In fact, he had so many it was hard to keep up with him as he spouted out the methods he would use to work with the shadow puppets. He was quick to explain what would be done, but was less specific for how it would happen (planning, scale of materials, etc.). His interest seemed to devolve when it came to working with the materials, and was easily discouraged and distracted when he encountered a small problem.
I believe in the future Helen and I will have to be especially attentive to making sure Neil considers the value of planning and patience (admittedly something many adolescents struggle with). Neil obviously has a clear image in his mind of what he wants to create, but (like many of us) is discouraged by the tedious work in the middle. Also, Neil seems to desire ownership to the creative process. When attempting to motivate and direct attention towards the task at hand he shied away further from the work. He does not want to be directed (but who does?). If we can get Neil to keep a positive attitude about what we are creating, I am confident the creative process will be very rewarding for all.
This was my first full day with my student, N. He brought his story that he wrote with him to see how we might adapt it to make a shadow play. He seemed pretty excited at the idea, too. I asked him if he would read the story to me, but he said that he doesn't really like to read, or that he can't read - I'm not entirely sure which - so I offered to read it for him - and aloud - which he seemed to enjoy. It is the story of a young teenage boy who discovers he has superpowers and so do many around him. Good vs. evil. Sibling rivalry. Damsels in distress. This one page story has it all. So we started talking about how we can make this in to shadow play and started with some cardboard cutouts, except N has grand schemes for this and while I don't want to rein in his creative spark, I do want to help him be a little more logical and methodical about what we are going to make, how we are going to make it, and how we are going to use the items. He seems to get ahead of himself a lot with his thoughts and it is hard for all of us, himself included, I think, to keep track of his thoughts, ideas, and how they may manifest in the three dimensional world. He goes off on tangents about minutia and then gets lost in that, forgetting where we started. I am even finding it a little frustrating and wouldn't mind some advice on how to communicate with him better, or at very least, how to let go of outcomes. I definitely want the experience to be enjoyable for my student as well as for myself, but am having a difficult time getting there.
ReplyDeleteAnd oh - so concerned with safety!! Having a learning disabled 15 year old buy wield an x-acto knife over corrugated cardboard is not for the feint of heart! I was even called out by my partner who, when I stressed safety again and again (and again... did I mention AGAIN?!) with an, "OK, MOM". That didn't feel real good. Where is the line between nagging and safety? I've had the personal experience of slicing myself badly with an x-acto blade when I was in art school and have been hyper-sensitive to safety issues in the studio ever since. I just don't want anyone to get hurt. So I feel like I spent a lot of time on the safety issue and like that detracted from everything else regarding the project.
I suggest that before you begin the hands activities, you could have a general group discussion about safety. You can ask them if they'll agree to play safe. Then if things do begin to spin out of control, you can say, "remember the agreements we made earlier today?" I don't know if this will work... it could help though.
Delete-Leah
Leah Mattice
ReplyDeleteArts Together
4/24/12
We got Ethan back with us today! He was happy to jump right in to Angel’s already in progress film. Thank you Alice for suggesting the underwater city. I suppose that isn’t very far off from an underground city. It served as a helpful challenge, incorporating an underwater city into Angel’s story. This invited new scenes and events for Angel’s story. Now as far as I can tell, after the fish bowl gets tainted by chemicals, the janitor assumes the fish are all dead, so he flushes them down the toilet. This is a magical toilet that instead of emptying into a sewer; it serves as a water tunnel to Atlantis. In this city, they meet new characters and new challenges. Wonderful story!
So Ethan Illustrated some cityscapes and I cut them out for him. He Also drew and adorable fish. The fish characters were turned into “stick shadow puppets.” Ethan and Angel played with their puppets, the light, the sheets, and the shadows for their first times. I’m very excited.
The kids came back from their spring break pretty focused and ready to work on their projects. I was really happy with the progress we made with Corey. Corey was really focused and ready to work from the minute he came in. He sat down and we got out the storyboards and he was starting to develop the ideas from last time and actually drawing on the paper. He was getting really excited about his skit and Joe and I were pretty happy that he wanted to push his idea further without much prompting from us. He came up with the bird flying through the sky and into the mountains. I think he may have wanted him to fly into a cave, but he wasn’t sure how we could show that with shadows. We started talking about making props for when the bird is flying through the sky. We had a lot of fun in the supply closet trying to find stuff to make clouds with. Corey ended up finding some dowels and we also found some cotton stuffing and thread. We started taking pieces of the stuffing and tying it to the poles with the thread. After a while we kind of had this mobile looking thing with all these clouds attached to it. We put it in front of the light and Corey was so happy to see how cool it looked, they were pretty realistic looking clouds. I think making this prop for Corey’s sketch helped a lot with the creative process and he seemed like he was finally getting comfortable with what we were doing. He started to loosen up with us and do silly things in front of the camera. I’m looking forward to the next session where we can probably finish our props and work more on putting the sketch together and adding the sound effects that he wanted.
ReplyDeleteThis past class with Angel was very productive. Once Angel arrived we sat down and got right to work. Last week we made several props out of cardboard. Due to the cardboard’s non-responsive nature, the props were difficult to cut out. Angel decided it would be better to remake props out of construction paper. Together we drew an assortment of fish, octopi monsters, and seaweed. Angel mostly drew each character, and Lindsay and I cut the props out. Overall we probably made approximately fifteen props. Angel was very happy with the final outcome. He was glad we made extras because “now we have the choice to decide which fish look better than others while working with the light and shadow”.
ReplyDeleteThis coming class Angel wants to start experimenting with light and shadow again. Last class we also discussed making some sort of dialogue for the performance. Angel seemed a little apprehensive and may want to have the play without any dialogue, possibly just music. I think we’ll figure out all of the extra details this coming class and leave rehearsing the play for the remainder of the semester. Also our group still doesn’t know if we’ll be working with Ethan. Angel wants to but unfortunately Ethan has been absent for the past few classes. Ethan has previously drawn city buildings and architecture. If he decides to work with us maybe we can somehow incorporate an under water city into our sea story.
During our last field work, Angel, Lauren and I continued to make props for the shadow play. This time we decided to work with construction paper to see how that holds up. Despite Ethan not being there again, Angel seemed very focused. We all drew and cut out as many different props as we could so we could see which ones we liked best and which ones worked best behind the screen. I believe Angel enjoys drawing the characters the most; he drew the fish and the monster. At one point he began to trail off and become more interested in telling us about one of his stories, but this time we were able to use that to get him more excited about what we were doing. He started talking about going to the beach and how he saw a horseshoe crab. I told him I had never seen one, so I asked him to draw it for me so I could have a better idea of what he was talking about. He drew it from all angles, a top view, bottom view and a side view. He was so into the horseshoe crab that I asked if he wanted to incorporate that character into the shadow play that we were doing. We also got him to think about other props we needed besides just the characters. I believe that during this class we made a lot of progress and were able to keep him focused more successfully than the previous times. For next class I think we will work on dialogue and maybe play around with the light and screen to see what will work best.
ReplyDeleteThankfully our Cory was there this time, and surprisingly excited to work. I was really concerned he would just revert back to playing with his phone again and the whole class would be a wash. He was however incredibly accommodating to new ideas and making them happen.
ReplyDeleteWhen we first started working out the story to our play, he seemed reluctant to add any sort of complexity or for the story to have much progression. But it also appeared that after some time he had ruminated on it and had come back ready to work. (Not that it’s laborious work or anything).
He appeared to be really enjoying himself as well. I really didn’t expect the change around in his approach to it. Of course, there’s no way of really knowing what might have caused his reluctance. I’d, however, guess that after the initial description of what we were going to do he just needed some time to absorb it and feel like he could really contribute. So he was able to just take off with the ideas we had mentioned before. It was mostly him that decided to use the stick for the clouds, and to then put his previously cut out bird on a dowel as well.
We were cooking along great last time and got a lot accomplished. I had a feeling we should add to the story to make it more of a narrative. I kept trying to bring it up and asked questions about where the next part of the story should go and how it should resolve. Later though it appeared that since we had some changes in setting going on, and basically a main character, that we had enough for a poetic kind of short story rather than a strict narrative arc. Cory also came up with an idea to have our bird character find a cave to fly to so that felt like a satisfying ending.
Last Tuesday Tanagne, Laura and I began to work on the story for the shadow play. Our student decided that she wanted to go back to working with the Sonic ideas even though it wasn’t her own original character. She had asked if that was ok and we said yes because at the end of the day it was her idea that should be executed. Even though Sonic wasn’t her original character we helped her to come up with an original story.
ReplyDeleteShe had brought a few pictures for reference but when she began talking about her ideas, which there were a lot of, they weren’t too focused. We had to ask her “What do you want that character to do?” or provide alternate ways to do a scene. I loved hearing her ideas and seeing where she was coming from in terms of what the characters are like from the TV show/video game.
In order to try to visualize what was going to happen, we decided to act the beginning of the scene out. This helped Tanagne really focus on what was going to happen and we wrote down our lines to try and remember what we were going to say. She remembered the scene better than I did. We decided that she was going to be Sonic and I was going to be her sidekick, Tails. Our plane crashes in the desert and there’s a sandstorm and we run into a pyramid for shelter. I loved acting with her and seeing her so animated. I’m looking forward to what we’re going to accomplish next week.
It was so great to finally start working with Tenagne on our shadow scenes. Before this class, we were preparing to build a scene around a dragon and a princess, but Tenagne changed her idea to a scene involving Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails, and a Mummy. Tenagne, Mikaela, and I fleshed out a scenario diligently since we were a little behind, and as we were playing around with dialogue and the setting everything seemed to fall in place.
ReplyDeleteTenagne was energetic yet focused the entire class. She really likes the television show, so she was really motivated and engaged with creating our scene. We decided the premise will be that Sonic and Tails crash in the Egyptian desert. They survive, but the radio doesn’t work, and what’s worse is that a sandstorm is coming. Sonic and Tails take cover in a nearby pyramid, where they find themselves being caught in a booby trap (maybe walls closing in?) Will they survive?
We only got as far as the pyramid, but we have plans for the rest of the scene. Tenagne came up with thoughtful lines like “Is that a sandstorm, or is that a mirage?” She is a very expressive person and extremely enjoyable to work with. I can’t wait to start putting together costumes and building objects we will need for our scene. Next class, our goal will be to finish the dialogue for the first half, and then begin creating a pyramid.
This week with Jahred we continued with his narrative and actually got to making quite a number of the props. We made a list of what would be needed and set to cutting things out of cardboard with x-acto knives, carefully of course. Katie and I took Jahred to the computer lab with out list of props and looked up images to work off of, so we would now what to draw and cutout. We got pictures of a bird, a specific rifle, and a tank. The rest, like the grave stone and zombie head, we drew and cut from Jahred’s direction and sketchbook. He was pretty focused throughout the session, and full of energy. He was really interested in precision of his craft when cutting out the tank. I worked out the bird, and Katie cut out smaller versions of the gun, tank, and bird. We had decided to use people for the zombies and humans in the play, which meant we didn’t have to make them. It was a little tedious to use x-acto blades for cutting out the cardboard, we thought utility blades may have been more useful. Or maybe just new blades for the x-actos. By the end of the class, we had small versions of the bird, tank and gun, and larger cardboard versions of the bird and tank. We decided we liked the smaller bird more, but also that we would probably need a larger version of the rifle if someone was to hold it. We thought up what to work on for next time: the larger rifle, the zombie head, and the grave stone.
ReplyDelete