Sand animation.
What is sand animation? Sand animation is also known as ‘Sand Art’ and it is a term that has two meanings, it is the name given to a style of live performance art and a type of animation. In which the artist creates a series of images using sand and a process which is achieved by applying sand to a surface and then rendering images by drawing lines and figures in the sand with their hand. A sand animator will generally use the help of an over head projector or a lightbox, similar to what a photographer will use to view translucent films. The animator will move sand on a backlighted or front lighted piece of glass to create each frame individually for the animated film.#
Animators may use different coloured sands to show depth and density to create their images and once the single frame is complete, the animator will capture it on a camera and then adjust the sand to be ready for the next frame in the sequence. The changes may sometimes be extremely subtle, such as the slight movement in the waves, or as drastic as completely changing the entire scene all together. The process is sort of similar to stop motion in the fact that the whole process is done frame by frame and manipulation of three dimensional and physical media in order to create the animation. The end result generally has the same sharp and uncoordinated movement that stop-motion animation has.
One contemporary artist that does sand art is a person called Kseniya Simonova, and she creates videos of her sand art such as her film called “Beautiful Morocco”.
Sand art is often used in the modern day in adverts, mostly coffee adverts as it fits in well with the product, sand animation is becoming a thing that people are now very interested in and is becoming popular within the industry.
Paint-on-glass Animation.
What is paint-on-glass animation? This type of animation style is a technique that is for making films by manipulating the slow-drying oil paints on sheets of glass. Gouache mixed with glycerine is sometimes used instead as an alternative but the most well known artist that uses this technique is a Russian animator called Aleksandr Petrov, he has used it in seven films all of which have won numerous awards.
An animation artist called Witold Giersz has created many films by using this technique, some of the films he has made are; Little Western (1960), Red and Black (1963) , Horse (1967) and The Stuntman (1972).
Aleksandr Petrov is an animator who mostly works with Oil-on-glass animation and has produced seven films using this technique. His artistic style is from the late 1980’s and onwards, it can be characterized as a type of Romantic Realism. The people, animals and landscapes are painted in a way that is animated in a realistic fashion but there are many times where in his films Petrov attempts to depict a characters inner thoughts and imaginations, In ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ the example is the fisherman dreams that he and the brothers are swimming through the sea and the sky, and in another film called My Love, the main characters illness was represented in him being shown buried beneath freshly fallen snow on a dark night to represent this.
Louise Marie 