Sand animation

{{Short description|Manipulation of sand to create animation}} {{Use mdy dates|date=September 2025}} thumb |300px |alt=Ukrainian fairy tale ''Cat and Rooster'' – animated drawings in the sand on the glass.|A Ukrainian film, ''Кіт та півнек'' (''Cat and Rooster''), created by recording a live performance of sand being manipulated on glass.

'''Sand animation''' is a form of stop motion that manipulates images formed with sand under a camera to create animation. A sand animator will make incremental changes in the sand, taking one frame with each change to create a sequence of movement. Sand animation can also refer to a performance in which an artist tells a story through a series of images drawn with their hands in real time using sand, usually projected through a live camera feed and accompanied by music. A sand animator will often use the aid of an overhead projector or lightbox (similar to one used by photographers to view translucent films) to illuminate the sand from behind, manipulating the light coming through the sand to create shading and lines.

This style is particularly well-suited to animating silhouettes,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Laybourne |first=Kit |title=The Animation Book – A Complete Guide to Animated Filmmaking—from Flip-books to Sound Cartoons to 3-D Animation |date=1998 |pages=145}}</ref> and changing the coarseness or density of the sand can be used to create effects depicting smoke or clouds.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Curtis |first=Scott |title=Animation |date=February 5, 2019 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=9780813570259 |pages=122}}</ref>

== History == Sand art has been made since antiquity, by several cultures, including Navajo, Aboriginal Australians and Tibetans.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |date=September 20, 2024 |title=Ukrainian sand animation artist brings show to Bristol |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg2g0rrxwdo |access-date=August 13, 2025 |website=BBC News |language=en-GB}}</ref> The Japanese art of Bonseki has been practiced since at the latest, the 7th century.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bonseki {{!}} Traditional Kyoto |url=https://traditionalkyoto.com/culture/bonseki/ |access-date=August 13, 2025 |language=en}}</ref> This did not go beyond still images however, due to technical limitations.

One of the first documented uses of sand in animation can be seen in the special effects in Lotte Reiniger's film ''The Adventures of Prince Achmed''. While Reiniger is known for her animated silhouette cutouts, she employed Walter Ruttmann on the film to create magical effects with sand and wax underneath her cut-outs.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Robert Russett |author2=Cecil Starr |title=Experimental animation: Origins of a New Art. |date=1988 |publisher=Da Capo Press |location=NY, NY |pages=77}}</ref>

Using sand as a primary material for animated films was adopted in the 1960s by Swiss animators Gisèle and Nag Ansorge and American animator Caroline Leaf. The Ansorges were running a small commercial film studio near Lausanne, Switzerland and used ground and dyed quartz sand to illustrate the circulating blood in a film about heart disease. They then adopted sand as their primary creative material, premiered their first complete film in the medium "Les corbeaux" ("The Ravens") in Annecy, 1967, and continued to work with sand until Gisèle's death in 1993.<ref>{{cite web |title=Sand Animator Ernest ‘Nag’ Ansorge Dies at 88 |url=https://www.awn.com/news/sand-animator-ernest-nag-ansorge-dies-88 |website=Animation World Network |access-date=January 4, 2025}}</ref> Caroline Leaf is credited as one of the first sand animators,<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Caroline Leaf Collection – Collection |url=https://harvardfilmarchive.org/collections/caroline-leaf-collection |access-date=August 13, 2025 |website=Harvard Film Archive |language=en}}</ref> and began using sand for animation when she was an undergraduate art student at Harvard University in 1968.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Roberts |first=Eric |year=1998 |title=Hand-Crafted Cinema Animation Workshop with Caroline Leaf |url=https://www.nfb.ca/film/handcrafted_cinema |access-date=March 21, 2016 |publisher=National Film Board of Canada}}</ref> She created her first film, ''Sand, or Peter and the Wolf'' (1968),<ref name=":2" /> by dumping beach sand on a light box and manipulating the grains to build figures, textures and movement, frame by frame.<ref name="HARV">{{Cite web |date=November 5, 2012 |title=The Animated Art of Caroline Leaf |url=http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2012octdec/leaf.html |access-date=March 21, 2016 |website=Film Series / Events |publisher=Harvard College Library}}</ref> In the 1970s, Eli Noyes, another Harvard graduate, created the short film ''Sandman'' (1973)<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Griffin |first=George |year=1980 |title=Cartoon, Anti-Cartoon |journal=The American Animated Cartoon |pages=261–268 |editor=Donald Peary and Gerald Peary}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Sandman |url=https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/2016-federal-grant-winners |access-date=March 6, 2017 |website=2016 Federal Grant Winners |publisher=National Film Preservation Foundation}}</ref> and the ''Sand Alphabet'' (1974), which became a feature on the children's educational television program ''Sesame Street''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Educational Film Library Association |year=1976 |title=Motion pictures in education |journal=Sightlines |volume=10–11 |page=62}}</ref> About the same time Misseri Studio located in Italy produced the A.E.I.O.U. series, which was drawn in wet sand.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=razMCgAAQBAJ&dq=AEIOU+animating+wet+sand&pg=PT419 Animation: A World History: Volume II: The Birth of a Style – The Three Markets]</ref> In 1977, ''The Sand Castle'' by Dutch-Canadian animator Co Hoedeman won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.<ref name="evans">{{Cite book |last=Evans |first=Gary |url=https://archive.org/details/innationalintere0000evan |title=In the National Interest: A Chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada from 1949 to 1989 |date=September 30, 1991 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-0802068330 |page=[https://archive.org/details/innationalintere0000evan/page/232 232] |quote=The Sand Castle Co Hoedeman. |access-date=March 19, 2012 |url-access=registration}}</ref> Corrie Francis Parks used colored gels as background elements in the film ''Tracks'' (2003) to introduce vibrant color in what is usually a black and white medium.<ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://vimeo.com/58062008 |title=Tracks (2003) |date=January 23, 2013 |last=Parks |first=Corrie Francis |access-date=January 21, 2025 |via=Vimeo}}</ref> In 2006, Gert van der Vijver<ref>{{Cite web |title=De Zandtovenaar |url=https://www.zandkunstenaar.nl/#about}}</ref> created the series ''De Zandtovenaar'' (''The Sand Magician'') on Dutch national television and since then, animates for the yearly outdoor play ''The Passion''.

Around this time, sand animation began to gain popularity as an art form in Ukraine, with Kseniya Simonova beginning to do live sand performances in the late 2000s, and Oksana Merhut (known as the "sand fairy"), who has made sand animations about her home country,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Ukrainian sand artist Oksana Merhut: My teaching work is a mission, and teaching everything beautiful is a task of the soul |url=https://drivemusicmedia.co.uk/ukrainian-sand-artist-oksana-mergut-my-teaching-work-is-a-mission-and-teaching-everything-beautiful-is-a-task-of-the-soul-08-08-2024/ |access-date=August 13, 2025 |website=Drive Music Media |language=ru}}</ref> and wrote the first professional teaching programme in 2014.<ref name=":1" />

=== Notable sand animations ===

* The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) * The Owl Who Married a Goose: An Eskimo Legend (1974)

==Notable artists==  *Ferenc Cakó * Su Dabao * Svetlana Telbukh * Co Hoedeman * Alexandra Konofalskaya * Caroline Leaf * Eli Noyes * Kseniya Simonova * Ilana Yahav

==References== {{Reflist|30em}}

==External links== {{commons category}} * [http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.2/3.2pages/3.2student.html An explanation of how to make animated films with sand animation] * [https://www.nfb.ca/film/animando_en/ Marcos Magalhães' "Animando" at NFB.ca] * [https://www.nfb.ca/film/owl_who_married_goose/ Caroline Leaf's film ''The Owl Who Married a Goose'' at NFB.ca]

Category:Sand animated films Category:Animation techniques Category:Visual arts media Category:Performance art Animation