Introduction

The purpose of the O-City project is to discover and promote the natural and cultural heritage of our cities, and, at the same time, to stimulate the orange economy injecting technical and professional knowledge in natural and cultural promotion of the cities involved. On the one hand, the promotion of the natural and cultural heritage of the cities will be achieved by creating creative multimedia items (photo, video, comic, animation, podcast, …) of each city and upload them into the O-City World platform. On the other hand, with the aim to develop the creative economy of the cities, different courses have been developed for teachers about the creative multimedia items that will be located into the O-City platform. These courses include resources about how to put into practice the contents with their students. In this way, teachers and students will create new creative multimedia items of their own cities that, after being validated, will be uploaded to the O-City World platform.

Additionally, the development of cultural, soft and business skills is also necessary for new practitioners in the orange economy. For this reason, the O-City training plan consists of the following 4 skill modules:

1. Module I. Heritage & Intellectual Property (IP): Basic content related to natural and cultural heritage (definition, classification, importance, etc.) and the protection of intellectual property (definition, categories, methods, etc.)
2. Module II. Technical: Basic content needed to develop multimedia elements (photography, video, animation, etc.) on heritage.
3. Module III. Business: Basic contents related to business and entrepreneurship skills in the orange economy (creation of business models, digital marketing, etc.)
4. Module IV. Soft skills: Contents to stimulate creativity, critical thinking and in general interpersonal skills as a tool to improve professional integration.

The Animation course is part of the MODULE II.  The aim of the course is aimed at understanding animation as a different recreation of reality, thus valuing the themes, movements and different aspects of it. Animation allows us to create content with all the freedom we want to accept, in this way we can create universes that are the mirrorless reflection of what we live daily and what we have in our cultural heritages.

In the first topic, we understand how humanity has always been curious about movement, how the physical effect that makes us see moving images has been developed and understood, understand what kind of animation humanity has created through the years and respect different cultures and how the reality of each culture has affected animation. In the same way, look for animated references with which they feel identified individually, as a family and as a group. Examples of traditional animation are also made to understand in the most primary way the use of light and the eyes to create movement.

In the second topic we undertake the search for what and how, which stories are relevant to tell and how I am going to do it. Animation is a giant deck of options with which we must play to combine our cards to understand what is valuable to tell in the correct way. At this process we want to find the stories in the students that are narratively strong, that tell powerful realities and find the aesthetic way in which they could be better told. We will address the writing for the animation, the correct descriptions and the drawings that will help us put the story in images that give it an understanding to create a final content. We will see how our characters are the engines of the story, why they are there and what they should look like, how they should move so that we understand the fictional pact that the viewer makes with the story. Special emphasis is placed on the study of references to animate.

In the third topic we understand how animation is not only to comprehend reality, but to study it and theorize it to achieve a level of movement that is pleasant for the viewer, we see how the principles have been used in multiple ways to find different aesthetics that produce countless effects in the viewer, understanding the scenes, gravity and movement as our fundamental pillars. We will see different animation techniques, to understand that not only with drawings we can create movements, but also with photos, objects or by tracing videos to use reality in different ways. In the same way we see how our characters are affected by these principles. ( the 12th Disney animation principles)

In the fourth topic, an exhaustive work is carried out on the final construction of the story, write it correctly and put it on paper to choose the technique to be used, design the characters, the backgrounds and adjust them to an attractive montage for the viewer. Visual as sound  at the end make an animated sequence that gives us the notion of the short film's image (the ideal would be to do it completely but time is limited), and combine the knowledge obtained in image and text to present an animation bible in which we can explain the narrative, aesthetics and objectives of our short film so that it is ready for production.

Here you can find all the information about the course: