Sand animation

A Ukrainian film, Кіт та півнек (Cat and Rooster), created using sand animation on glass.

Sand animation is the manipulation of sand in real time to create animation. In the performance art, an artist creates a series of images using sand, a process which is achieved by applying sand to a surface and then rendering images by drawing lines and figures in the sand with one's hands. A sand animation performer will often use the aid of an overhead projector or lightbox (similar to one used by photographers to view translucent films). To make an animated film, sand is moved on a backlit or frontlit piece of glass to create each frame.

History

Techniques of animating with sand were pioneered by Caroline Leaf when she was an undergraduate art student at Harvard University in 1968. She created her first film, Sand, or Peter and the Wolf (1968), by dumping beach sand on a light box and manipulating the grains to build figures, textures and movement, frame by frame. In the 1970s, Eli Noyes, another Harvard graduate, created the short film Sandman (1973) and the Sand Alphabet (1974), which became a feature on the children's educational television program Sesame Street. About the same time Misseri Studio located in Italy produced the A.E.I.O.U. series, which was drawn in wet sand. In 1977, The Sand Castle by Dutch-Canadian animator Co Hoedeman won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. In 2006, Gert van der Vijver created the series De Zandtovenaar (The Sand Magician) on Dutch national television and since then, animates for the yearly outdoor play The Passion.

Notable artists

• Ferenc Cakó
• Su Dabao
• Svetlana Telbukh
• Co Hoedeman
• Alexandra Konofalskaya
• Caroline Leaf
• Eli Noyes
• Kseniya Simonova
• Ilana Yahav

External links

• An explanation of how to make animated films with sand animation
• Marcos Magalhães' "Animando" at NFB.ca
• Caroline Leaf's film The Owl Who Married a Goose at NFB.ca