sand animation

Sand Animation

Sand animation is a broad term used to refer to two methods of creating moving pictures / films of sand art; one method is an actual animation technique, while the other focuses more on capturing the act of painting with sand on film. A sand animation performer will often use the aid of an overhead projector or lightbox. They can end in the exact same result, but they're still different and only one counts as real animation. In actual sand animation, each frame is created individually by the animator, then captured on camera, just like in cel animation. The only difference is that instead of using ink and paint on acetate cels, the animator is using sand on a flat surface, usually made of either wood or backlit glass. Animators may use different colored sands to create complex pictures, or may just arrange the sand with their hands to let light, shadow, depth, and density create the picture.

The Sand Artists:

Kseniya Simonova is a sand animator. At first, she finds it's very difficult, because its was sand- not pencils or paints.She experiments with beach but it was too uncomfortable for sand animation and then she tried the river sand, but that did not work. However,her husband began researching better options on the internet and he found out the volcanic sand.The she started practicing drawing with sand in a small dark room in a house they rented. She said it was so difficult that she wanted to give up in three days. It was physically hard because she had to stand for long hours. Simonova trained at nights for three months. To realized the essence of sand animation, with its constant transformations of images, she had to retrain her vision and start seeing objects as they would appear in sand.It is challenging, this is the art form required her standing for long periods of timeand also required her retrain her vision to adapt to the unique medium. 

This is Kseniya Simonova's sand animation work from youtube: 

"Beautiful Morocco" (2013)

"Legends of China"

IIana Yahav is a sand artist or sand animation artist. Her art reflected in performances in front of live audience, in video clips and in advertisements. It is a unique, minimalist art form that few artists worldwide engage in. Ilana created the puppets for a politicial satire program on the lsraeli television named "Chartzufim", based on the UK's notorious "Spitting Image". As a sand artist, Ilana performed all over the world, in front of a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds: from small, local and intimate performances before the King of Spain, the King of Belgium, and others.
Each performance requires lengthy preparations, stasting with the many sketches that she makes in a notebook, and numerous experiments on the sand table itself. Here, the creation generally undergoes extensive changes until the final version is crystallized. In the performances, Ilana uses her hands to create images in sand on a transparent backlit table, while a video camera positioned above her conveys the emerging creation live to a giant screen that displays it to the audience. light and music also form impotant elements of Ilana's creations. in her works, she uses colourful lights that emerge from under a transparent table and a soundtrack adpapted specifically to the message and the sensations being conveyed in the work, and sometimes even composed and produced specially for this purpose.




This is IIana Yahav's works from youtube:

 "Jupiter"

"Love 2008"

In this video; sand, brushes and black card paper are used in this sand animation. The story of this animation is about the penguin finding fish in the ocean and swimming happily. Sand is a unstable object to use for taking frames however it also presents the soft movement which be easily to control and it doesn't left any marks behind. It's difficult to catch every same angles during photographing; although i have used the camera stand to hold on the right position, the ineffable things might change the position, like pushing the stand accidentally during filming the video. Next time i will put more attention on this problem and add more details of the sand drawings.