Happily ever after?

LONG time no see.
Yes, this blog is closed. No more posts will come after this one.

I even forgot this blog of mine existed after two years of not using it again.
But I just found it back - accidentally.

And that's why I want you all to give a little update of what happened AFTER the Erasmus study.


So.
I finished my degree in teaching, which I was studying at the moment I went to Denmark.
But what's more: I started a NEW STUDY.

Yes indeed, I wanted to study at least three more years.
And in what?
Surprise, surprise... I started a study in ANIMATION!
Yes! I liked it so much, I actually wanted to study it, fully, every detail, every hard labour.

And right now that I'm writing this post, I'm already in my second year of animation studies.
Time goes by so fast!
This Erasmus thing feels like yesterday...

AND IT WAS THE BEST TIME OF MY LIFE.
Or at least, before I completely integrated animation into my life.
I don't regret a thing! (Okay, maybe that last night in the Dicken's bar, I should not have drank so much)

But if I can give ONE ADVICE to anyone:
GO HAVE AN ERASMUS ADVENTURE


Big love.
Aagje



P.S. If you want to see my work from my actual animation studies, you can check out my Tumblr.

Neka - my final film

At the end of the course, we had to make our own film. We had a bit more than 2 weeks to make it. You might think it's short - it is not.

Here is the result of my weeks of hard work, from 9 in the morning, 'til 4 in the afternoon.




I am happy with my result and proud of it, eventhough things could have been better.
The music in the film is specially made for it - thank you Antira, for that! It couldn't be better.

I really enjoyed working on the movie, so I might make more movies at home, when I have time... (:

The end

Look at this... More than a month ago since I last posted something...
Wow.
I just didn't have to time for it. We were having so much fun here, that time flew by.

I will try to give you a quick look on what happened.

In October it was the autumn holiday.
With a bunch of friends I made here, we went on citytrips to Oslo, Stockholm & Copenhagen.
That was a really amazing week we had!

 

After that, I had an internship in a Danish school. Together with Andrei and Casper, we had to teach animation to teenagers of 15 years old. 

And in the end of October we went to LEGOLAND! It was really nice!

Also, not to forget, it was my birthday on the 27th...

So I asked some people to go and play laser-tag. I had never done that before, but it was really nice! I kinda won....

In November we had to write a report about our internship.
We also had to start our final movie (see post above).

As being part of the social committee, we had some budget left and organized a trip  to Aarhus.
There we went to Den Gamle By, a part of Aarhus that they rebuilt as it was a long time ago. It was nice to see. But I also wanted to go to the art museum, ARoS.
That museum was really really nice. I liked the exhibitions that were there at the moment.

 

But right now, as I'm writing this, already about half of the people left here... I am leaving in four days... FOUR DAYS!
I don't want to leave this all behind...

Erasmus Photocontest

Recently I received a mail about a photo contest for Belgian Erasmus students.
You have to send in a nice picture from your Erasmus.
The one with the most votes wins a Europe Interrail pass for 30 days, for two persons! How amazing would that be! Travelling across Europe for a month... (:

So here's the link to the contest page:
https://www.facebook.com/eposvzw?v=app_1396867683882309app_data=entry_id%3D38489584%26gaReferrerOverride%3D

You will have to like the page before you can vote (I'm sorry for that...).
After that you see a list of sent photos. Mine is the one called "Crazy choices" and is a picture of a lonely house in the middle of the water.
My initials are A. V.

And just so you know: you can vote EVERY WEEK again!!! ^^

Movie n° 5: L IV E

Last two weeks we worked on a class animation.
The technique we used was hand drawing. That means you have to draw every frame by hand.

Well... I 'cheated' a little bit on that. I scanned both my background and my main character and then used photoshop to place the character on every background.

Here is the result of the class movie.




My part is in the Water part, where the seagull lands on the water.

Life size puppet

Today we had class from Gert, about puppet animation.

As part of the class, we had to create a life size puppet out of newspapers and tape.

The limbs had to be separate.

Here some pictures of our work.

 

 

After that we had to animate our puppet.

Each person had to move a limb.

I moved a leg.

Through coördination we managed to make the puppet walk kinda 'natural'.

All the others students who saw us walking around with the puppet probably thought we were crazy, but I don't care! :)

Here a final picture of our lovely class, the puppets and our teacher!

Movie n° 4: Creation

Movie n° 3: The End

 

Workshop with young children

This Wednesday we had to work with children from the kindergarten.
They were around 5 years old.
When they came into he room they were shown a few animation movies we made.
After that they got a short introduction to the steps you have to make during the process of making an animation movie.

1. Idea 

2. Synopsis 

3. Storyboard 

4. Background 

5. Characters 

6. Animating 

7. Sound

After that they were split into groups of five.
The children had to take the puppet they brought and try to put them in a way so they expressed some feelings (happy, sad, …).
Then they also had to do it with their own face.

After that their puppets had to walk and greet each other.
When they got to know their puppet and were a little more comfortable they had to come up with a story with the characters.
They chose two bad guys, a good one, and two Princesses.

When they know the story completely each child had to draw a part of the story for the storyboard. After that they had to place the drawings in the right order.

 

Then the staging began.
We made a background and placed the camera. And finally we could take pictures.
Each child moved it’s own character.

At last an adult can edit the frames a little bit, if the timing isn’t right.

My thoughts about the day: 
It really is difficult to communicate with children if you don’t know their language!
Also, we ourselves didn’t really know what to do, so I think next time would go a lot better.

The creating of the story took us really long.
Also drawing took long, but I don’t mind that.
Because of the drawing they drew themselves they are more connected to the movie and they learn a lot more.
Also because they had to place the drawings in the right order. So they really know what the story is about.

The moving itself was a little bit difficult in the beginning, the children moved their puppets a lot. But still, after a while they got it, I think. I hope the children had something about this morning, although they did not finish their entire movie.

Movie n° 2: Hopefully Alive

A normal day at the pond

The second movie was made with cut-out animation.
During the making of the film we had some problems with the team, but the result is really good!
I'm proud of my movie! ^^

Ringkøbing

Today we went on a trip to Ringkøbing.

It's a village at the west coast of Denmark.

We went there because we needed to get our residence permit.
When we stay for more then four months in Denmark, we need that.

And since it's quite a long drive, the school made it a trip.
We visited the village, went to the lighthouse a few villages further and walked on the beach.
 

 

After that we visited a Folkhøjskole. 

It's some kind of an art school where you can follow courses from three to eight months.
The school is very ecological, they produce their own electricity and heath with solar panels, a windmill and geothermal heathing.
They also have a big field with trees, vegetables, herbs, ...
All maintained by volunteers.

It was really nice!

This here is the outdoor kitchen in their garden.

It was a fun and exhausting day!
I love our group of international students! 

Puppet Camp

Last two days was Puppet Camp!

We went with the bus to Ørre, about 50km from Viborg.
There we stayed in some sort of cabin, an old school. 

'Ørre Naturskole'.

It was located next to a small forest, and there were also some hens, goats en geese. 

Thursday we had to come up with a story and make the puppets for the story. The group where I was in based our story on Hansel & Gretel. Only the two main characters became animals.

My puppet was a mouse, the other was a cat. And then there was the witch.

Here some progress of my puppet.

 

On Thursday evening we had a bonfire. Really nice, although my clothes smell kinda smokey.

 

The next morning we had to get op really early and start rehearsing our play.

At 10h30 the children arrived.

Nine children all around the age of five.

We all played without words, only with sounds, because they can not understand English and we can not speak Danish.

The food was lovely! Really, the best camp food ever!

Those were two great - but tiring - days!

Movie n°1: A teapot in Paris

Pixilation

Today we had our first 'real' animation class.
We learned about pixilation!
It's actually stop motion, but you use objects that you bring to life by using animation.

Tomorrow we have a day to make an animation in a group of three.
What will that become...?

Today we also had our first Danish class!
This is the first thing we learned:

"Hej, jeg hedder Aagje! Hvad hedder du?"

It means: "Hey, my name is Aagje! What's your name?"

We laughed a lot with the pronunciation!
It's really strange!

In our spare time we sometimes play volleyball. It hurts a lot!
This evening I played for the second time this week. My wrists feel like a big bruise.
But it's fun!

Having a good time here in Denmark!
See you next post!

Week n° 1

First week of school is finished! It's weekend already!
Let me try and explain some of the things that happend this week.

This week was introduction week, so we didn't have real courses.
We got to know eachother a bit better and learned about the school and Viborg.

What happend on monday I already explained.
What happend the other days I will tell you now.

Tuesday morning we had a class about the Danish welfare system.
In the afternoon we had some sort of drama and music.
We did the game 'Around, under and over' (or something like that).
We had to stand in a circle. When there was a signal we all had to run around a person of choice.
After that we had to pick two persons, run around the first and crawl under the legs of the other.
At last we had to choose three persons, run around the first, crawl under the other and jump over the last one. It was a bit of a chaos, that game, but really fun!

We also sang a version of 'We will rock you', and learned a Danish folk dance, some sort of polka.
The polka was a bit difficult for some, because it was in a circle with lots of combinations.

Then the class was split in two, the Animation part and the Entrepreneurship part.
We did a name game where we had to find an animal with the first letter of our name.

At last we had to make something for the other group.
The Entrepreneurship sang a song for us and teached it to us.
We made a jungle and made the others feel like they where in it.


 

This is a picture of the students that follow Social Entrepreneurship after they teached us the song (so not me).

On wednesday we only had classes in the morning.
We got information about our student card and StudyNet.
But my student account wasn't activated yet, so I couldn't do anything because I needed my ID to log in to the internet...

Yesterday we only had courses in the morning, because our teacher for the afternoon was ill.
In the morning we got some info about the canteen at school and after that we got a course about the Scandinavian education.

Today we had a guided tour around Viborg. We went to the old centre, visited a museum, visited the dom and made a boattrip on the two lakes.

   

This is almost the entire group of Animation and Entrepreneurship!