Maker Camp: Animate Your Life!

Today on Maker Camp at 11am PST on Google+ we get to hangout with three professional animators and graphic designers who will share tips and secrets of their craft. If you’re interested in drawing, illustration, and graphic design this the camp for you.

On deck for today is Karin Fong, David Yoon, and Julian Glander. You’ve seen their work on TV, movies, commercials, and right here on Maker Camp.

Among other things, Karin crafts visually inventive sequences for television, film, and digital platforms, including the main titles for Boardwalk Empire on HBO. She created animation for the children’s classic “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?” She directed spots for brands as Herman Miller, Target, and Sony PlayStation and created large-scale video installations for sites as diverse as Lincoln Center, Times Square, Las Vegas, and the LA Opera

David is the creator of the  “Narrow Streets: Los Angeles” photo project, the Microlawns project, and Sorta, a reconfigurable sketchbook.

Julian is an illustrator/designer based in Brooklyn who designed the GIFs for MAKE and Maker Camp this year. His work can also be seen on the uniforms of Chili’s waiters and waitresses across the country, among other places.

But wait! There’s more.

Today’s project is a phenakistoscope. What’s that? It’s an early animation device that used the persistence of vision principle to create an illusion of motion. The principle behind the phenakistoscope had been recognized by the Greek mathematician Euclid and later in experiments by Newton, but it was not until 1829 that this idea became firmly established by Belgian Joseph Plateau. Plateau planned the project in 1839 and invented phenakistoscopes in 1841.

Today’s project takes only 15-20 minutes to build and requires just a few items to put it together. Have a look at how it works:

For something a little more challenging we’ve got a project for pixilation—full body stop animation.

Pull up a chair and maybe a pad and pencil and get ready for a great day of Maker Camp starting at 11am PST on Google+. And be sure to visit the Maker Camp community page on Google+ and post a project of your own.