Work from a Faculty Development Grant between the Fashion and Digital Arts Departments at Pratt Institute. Costumes were reinforced with aluminum mesh to allow for frame by frame animation.
Credits:
Mike Enright: Fabrication, Animation, Editing.
Liz Goldberg-Johnson: Fabrication, Animation.
Erin Cadigan-Mills: Fabrication.
Music: As I Figure Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
The following is a documentation of research conducted by Professor Mike Enright ( DDA Animation) and Professor Liz Goldberg-Johnson ( Fashion Department ) relating to a cross disciplinary intersection between the fields of Fashion Design and Animation. With the support of the Pratt Faculty Development Fund, Professors from both fields explored the space where stop motion animation techniques and costume design and construction intersect. For their research, the focus area was on constructing costume elements that are poseable, able to be manipulated in shape, but hold form for the sake of animating.
Professor Enright’s experience with Stop Motion Puppets and Digital Animation Technology was met with Liz Goldberg-Johnson’s experience with Drawing for Fashion Design and knowledge of the History of Costume. Together, through retreat activity and studio time, they researched, experimented, and produced scale costumes that could hold a pose frame by frame, allowing for the illusion that fabric was being dragged through the air by a puppet’s body.
The activities during the course of the past year involved sketching costume design concepts, building poseable puppets, and testing various materials to insure that they could work for frame by frame animation. These activities took place both at an Artist’s Retreat in Woodstock NY, as well as continued research at Pratt Myrtle Hall’s Animation Studios.
It is the goal of this research activity to initiate a conversation between the Digital Arts and Fashion Departments at Pratt Institute in which we examine where our practices cross over. The hope is that we could offer a special topics elective class in the near future that will allow our students from both department’s to further explore the art of animating costume and the materials.