PARIS STUDY CENTRE

A short visit to Paris with a good chance to practise French, as well as immersing oneself in the rich culture of one of the world’s great cities.

We left early on Monday morning, catching the ferry across the Channel and then driving down to Paris. We were back at Kelston in good time to celebrate the New Year at home. We climbed the EiffelTower, visited the Louvre and Notre Dame, and explored the Champs Elysée, Montmartre and La Défense.
 

DARTMOOR SENIORS

Dartmoor is a great place offering a wide range of outdoor activities. Among other things, we explore WoodlandsAdventurePark, go horse-riding and spend a day at the beach. There’s plenty of opportunities for sports and even a bit of culture. We stay at Ivybridge, near Plymouth.
 

Death Star riders have stolen the precious ‘plasticine’ material needed for the energy shield of the planet Terraferma. Without plasticine Terraferma is doomed...

Who could take on the task of travelling across the galaxy to reach Plastonia and bring back some plasticine to save the planet? Can the Special Mission Robots of Terraferma dodge the evil riders of the Death Star protecting Plastonia? Would they accomplish their mission before Terraferma is destroyed...?

This is an epic film combining space travel, action chases and humorous animated scenes. This is the first Kelston animation of considerable length – almost 7 minutes – and the product of various generations of Kelstonians.

Chidi and Ike did great work on the rocket and the modelling of the buildings of Terraferma. Credit should be given to Johnny and Dom for the excellent plasticine animation in Plastonia. John, Stephen, Louis and Jan did great work on the animation of the Death Star robots and rocket launch. Tim designed the Death star spaceship based on an existing object. Michael animated the gracious king of Terraferma, including the funny light bulb...  Matthew and Joe did the voice over – Joe also changed the name of Regalium to Terraferma. Conor worked on tweaking the story line to bring together all the animated clips.

 

Watch the video by clicking on image to left

Click on images below

DALEK VERSUS GOLLUM

Have you ever imagined what would happen if you brought together a Dalek and Gollum?

Well, we have. And not only that. Jojo, Joe and Mark have animated it!

Voice over was by Ollie and Joe. Mark edited the animation and added the background and music effects. For this animation we used the higher resolution camera.
 
 
TRAFFIC WARDEN GLADIATOR

This is the third part of the series Traffic Wardens through Time produced by the Seniors during the Autumn term 2006, to try out the facilities of the new animation studio.

The three parts of the series were modelled, animated and filmed by Joe, Mark, Jojo and Ollie. Voice over was done by Joe and Ollie, with Mark directing the recording. Mark selected the backgrounds, did the editing, and added special effects.

The filming was done using the ‘blue screen’ facility in the new animation studio. Figures were modelled solely from plasticine without using metal armatures. The camera used was a low resolution webcam (fortunately we now have a better one!). Backgrounds were superimposed onto the animation using computer software. The same software was used to insert voice and music, and to add special effects.

The scene in the film is set in Roman times. Our traffic warden is caught dreaming of a gladiator fight, but day dreaming has consequences…
 
 
EXPLORING UNKNOWN WORLDS

‘Exploring Unknown Worlds’ is the first Juniors animation production. It displays a series of 3D worlds created from scratch together with a series of rockets during exploration flights across these unknown worlds. The scenes were developed as part of the ‘Animation’ Activity Crew during Autumn 05.

Early Animation Techniques

 The animation activity in Kelston started at the end of 2001 with the short movie ‘The party’ featuring a collection of worms threatened by a wicked lizard. It was a 1 minute stop-motion plasticine animation created by a group of juniors over two days. Since then we have improve the stop motion techniques, and we have introduce computer generated animations and backgrounds.

The ‘Unicorn’ is part of a longer stop-motion animation created by Dom and Lucas using plasticine figures. Computer processing was employed to accelerate the movements and add the music.

The process we use to add computer backgrounds on stop-motion plasticine animations is as follows:

1.- Plasticine animation is film against a uniform background (preferably blue or green, although white also works). (Animation process 1).
2.- Background of the animation is digitally removed. (Animation process 2
3.- A computer background is generated using a graphics software. (Animation process 3)
4.- The computer background is then combined with the plasticine animation to get the final result. (Animation process 4).

To generate the space scenes in ‘Destination: Plastonia’ we are using Caligari trueSpace 3.2. This graphics software enables us to create a full 3D model of planets, satellites, spaceships, rockets, and even stars and asteroids. Objects can then be moved along selected trajectories, and lights added to simulate lasers and explosions. (Animation software)