Photography Tricks, Stop Motion Animation, and Character Designing Workshops at SICFF 2018

Sharjah - Sharjah International Children’s Film Festival (SICFF 2018) has been stirring imagination and giving kids a sense of wonder. Since day one until its closing, children have been attending over 40 workshops to understand and harness their creativity. SICFF kept in line with its goal to let children explore, tackle hurdles, and embrace discovery.

While creating art, the key skill is to learn how to deconstruct preconceived notions of ideas and objects and allow students to keenly see what is in front of them. Isaiah Paul D. Cabanting from Ajyaal Media, Ryan G. Palis from RYCLARK media arts, and Suresh Eriyat from Eeksaurus conducted workshops that allowed students to apply various techniques of art and present their own voice.

Character Designing by Isaiah Cabanting

“You can create the most beautiful character in the world, but if there is little thought behind it, it just won’t be that interesting,” said Isaiah to his enthusiastic students. He taught them how to make a good character design by focusing on its shape, story, form, personality, appeal, and design. He further elaborated on how briefs are processed from understanding to researching, sketching, and creating a story.

Isaiah explained that great characters comes from simplicity. The shape of characters should give you an economy of the description of the character. A good shape like ‘Mickey Mouse,’ comes with a great and recognizable silhouette. The character should have personality and harmony in its form and detail.

By the end of the session, students had created their own characters and received gift bags from Ajyaal’s characters: Hamdoon and Hamda.

The key rule is: Never forego the design!

Photography Tricks with Ryan G. Palis

“Whenever you are bored at home, take out your camera and try out these cool tricks. I know lots of people who end up making money from using their free time constructively,” said Ryan G. Palis. Media students from across UAE attended his workshop to learn cool and neat tricks of photography. He taught them how to cut out shapes from cardboards and place them on the camera lens while creating amazing bokeh effects. Students got a chance to play with CDs to create flares in their photography. They also learned how to use plastic wraps to create neat blurring or color effects.

Students also engaged in smoke photography. They learned how to use external flash and create a set up to capture the best smoke images. An incense stick burned its way through the class while students clicked and captured amazing photos.

Stop Motion with Suresh Eriyat

“Stop motion, in its most basic form, is comprised of just a few steps. Take a picture of an object, move the object slightly, and take another picture and repeat the process,” explained Suresh Eriyat. Once you’ve taken all the images you need, upload them to the computer and edit them together.

You can add some music or sound effects in the background and voila! You’ve got your stop motion animation! Depending on the length of the video, the number of photos will vary. It can be a long process or short one.

Suresh pumped the class with a sound advice to the students, “Whether it be stop motion or anything artistic endeavor you want to undertake, take the Nike approach and say, ‘Just do it!’ You have to start somewhere, so get moving now and create!”

-Ends-

© Press Release 2018