Riso Animation: A Self-Portrait

This was my first experiment with riso/print animation, created during Kelli Anderson's 2-day Riso Animation workshop (virtual) in February 2024.

I created the original animation myself the day before the workshop by distorting and editing a photo of myself with Photoshop and saving the frame after each edit. I added layers of cursor images that were used for my previous weaving project in addition to a photo of my hand holding a tulip.

During the workshop, under Kelli's instruction, I used Photoshop to create color-separated contact sheets. The sheets were then sent to and printed by Keegan Mills Cooke and his Riso machine. The day after, our class met together again to stitch together the riso-printed contact sheets back into an animation. Kelli was an excellent teacher, and this workshop became a captivating introduction to animation for me.

Here were the scanned contact sheets for the project:

Challenge

Due to one of my contact sheet file being lost, two different scanners had to be used to scan my contact sheets. Each scanner had its own color interpretation and resolution, as you can see by the images above. This became an interesting challenge for me where I had to experiment with multiple combinations and levels of lightness, contrast, color balance, and saturation until the two contact sheets were close enough for my satisfaction.

Magic

As someone with no formal training in animation, this process made it clear to me that animation is magic! Animation is a way to trick the eye and the mind (similar to traditional magic tricks) by stitching together images over time to give them a sense of continuity and "life". I'm quite amazed by it and inspired to create more.