'What is Love?' The week of March 24th, 2014 the staff members of Tiny Circus came to Grand Valley State University. The Tiny Circus team travels to host stop-motion animation workshops for all ages at schools and universities, art and film festivals, museums and galleries. They perform a week long session working with students and staff on building stop-motion animations to create and tell stories. One of the missions behind the Tiny Circus is to promote that idea that anyone has the ability to create art, it isn't limited to artists and art majors. Students of all majors and background work together to achieve one goal. Every session the Tiny Circus hosts is a different topic/idea, the students at Grand Valley were presented with the theme 'Love'.
During the first discussion session with the two leaders from Tiny Circus they asked questions regarding love - 'What is love?' 'How do you show love?' 'What did you do to show love today?' Many students struggled with placing exact words or explanations on what is love. Since love is such a board topic with multiple ways to express it and varies from student to student. Love can be for family, pets, career, oneself, food, the list goes on and on.
Defining exactly what love is seemed like the difficult part, although the second task was brainstorming a visual to represent love. My class collaborated with Tiny Circus and bounced ideas off on another on the idea of the love between the Moon and the Earth. These two elements in our world share a constant relationship that isn't necessary thought of on a daily basis. The gravitational pull constantly keeps them together and the value of true love occurs when the Moon reappears every night. The phases in a relationship of love is viewed as the phases of the Moon, developing and growing to love.
Through the development of the stop-motion animation, there were two screens set up in the room, a black chalkboard and a white board. The elements drawn on one board was projected across to the second board. A photo was taken each time a new element was either erased or drawn on. A 1 second clip within this videos can contain as many as 15 photo frames. It's a long and tedious process but with the collaboration of a variety of students working together the video comes together.
The chance to have Tiny Circus attend my campus for a week was a fun change in the daily school routine. It brought a fresh new perspective to the art department and brightened the atmosphere of students who were involved. Below is a link to the final stop-motion video created by students at Grand Valley State University, hope you enjoy our interpretation of 'Love' and I encourage you to #ShowLoveToday
During the first discussion session with the two leaders from Tiny Circus they asked questions regarding love - 'What is love?' 'How do you show love?' 'What did you do to show love today?' Many students struggled with placing exact words or explanations on what is love. Since love is such a board topic with multiple ways to express it and varies from student to student. Love can be for family, pets, career, oneself, food, the list goes on and on.
Defining exactly what love is seemed like the difficult part, although the second task was brainstorming a visual to represent love. My class collaborated with Tiny Circus and bounced ideas off on another on the idea of the love between the Moon and the Earth. These two elements in our world share a constant relationship that isn't necessary thought of on a daily basis. The gravitational pull constantly keeps them together and the value of true love occurs when the Moon reappears every night. The phases in a relationship of love is viewed as the phases of the Moon, developing and growing to love.
Through the development of the stop-motion animation, there were two screens set up in the room, a black chalkboard and a white board. The elements drawn on one board was projected across to the second board. A photo was taken each time a new element was either erased or drawn on. A 1 second clip within this videos can contain as many as 15 photo frames. It's a long and tedious process but with the collaboration of a variety of students working together the video comes together.
The chance to have Tiny Circus attend my campus for a week was a fun change in the daily school routine. It brought a fresh new perspective to the art department and brightened the atmosphere of students who were involved. Below is a link to the final stop-motion video created by students at Grand Valley State University, hope you enjoy our interpretation of 'Love' and I encourage you to #ShowLoveToday