Day of the Animals Art Ninja

I'm Ricky.

I live in Bristol.

I work as an animator, which is lucky because I love art.

Goal!

I live for art. I even dream of art.

I draw, I paint, I make things.

Nailed it!

I hang out with my mates.

Gavin, Michelle, Rich and Sarah.

It's me!

Most importantly, I make ninja moves.

Some people call me the...

Today I'll show you how to make a bag with bite.

We'll be monkeying around with this chalk pastel primate.

And I'd be "lion" if I didn't say we make art that stinks.

Because today it's...

Ah! It's a new day.

I better get my ninja on.

And my clothes.

What's that noise? Sounds like someone's a little hoarse.

All right, Gav, what are you doing?

I'm training for the Bristol marathon and a half.

Why are you running a marathon dressed as the front end of a horse?

Well, my running mate pulled out the back.

You mean to say he had his face down there?

I'm not surprised.

Oh, that's a good point.

I should probably find something better to dress as, shouldn't I?

See ya!

Gav would be better off running in an old T-shirt, like this!

But I'm going to use this to make something really cool.

The Art Ninja piranha bag!

I need to start by turning this inside out.

Ninja skills!

Now, I'm going to pen a shape into it

that's going to make a fish's body.

All the way along up here. Have a little flat top.

Then we have the same angle going back down the other side.

Now I'm going to cut off the top part of the T-shirt,

two centimetres above my line of pins.

There we go.

Right, now I need to cut out some fins.

And for that, I'm using a dishcloth.

First, two side fins.

Then a tail fin.

And finally, a back fin.

The T-shirt's inside out,

so I'm going to pin these fins on the inside,

so when I turn it round the right way, they'll be on the outside.

Just start by unpinning here and then sneaking this through the side.

Pop that one in like that.

There we are.

Once it's nice and flat I'm just going to pin it back into place.

OK. Now I need to do the same thing with these side fins.

Pin it in place.

And on the other side.

Great. Now I can start sewing it.

So I've got myself a little bit of thread and a needle here

and I've tied a knot in the end so that when I pull it through,

it holds it in place.

I'm going to sew all the way along my line of pins,

using a running stitch.

Always be careful, because I'm using a needle.

Right.

Now I can turn it round the right way.

There we are.

And as you can see, our stitching is all hidden and really tidy.

Now I'm going to stick on the back fin with a little bit of fabric glue.

This is also called a dorsal fin, a true fact.

And I've layered up some different coloured pieces of felt

to make some eyes,

and I'm going to glue them on with fabric glue.

There we are.

I've also cut out some triangles and I'm going to put them on the inside

of the T-shirt to become the piranha's teeth.

Five at the top and four at the bottom.

Now it is a bag, it means it needs straps.

So I need to cut a couple of holes for them.

Just going to pinch the two layers of T-shirt together,

just cut through them both. There we go.

And the same on this side, too.

There we are. Now also this bag's going to have a drawstring,

so I'm going to make that by using

the hem at the bottom of the T-shirt.

I'm going to cut a hole into the side of the hem here,

just so we can get the drawstring in.

Do the other side.

There we go.

Now I've got some ribbon to become the straps

and we need to thread this through the hem of the T-shirt

to make the drawstring.

Now that's quite tricky, so I'm going to tape it to a pencil

to make it a little bit easier.

There we go.

-There

-we are.

One side done. Now I need to do the other side.

A tip here to make this easier

is to hold on to the back of the pencil and gather the material

over the end with the point.

There you go, two drawstrings.

Now I need to just tie them to make the straps.

So I'm going to tape one end again to the pencil and poke it through.

There we go. Pull it off.

And then I'm just going to tie that to the other end.

Just do the same on the other side.

And tie that last one together.

There we go.

Now to try it on.

Check it out!

You don't have to make your bag in the shape of a fish,

there's plenty of other catchy designs, like this.

Bat pack.

Or how about this "turtle-ly" awesome turtle bag!

KNOCKING

Oh, better run and get that.

There you are, Gavin.

That is so much more appropriate for running.

No! I'm wearing this underneath.

My outfit's in here.

Now turn around and I'll change.

So how long do you think it will take you to finish the marathon?

About an hour and a half.

An hour and a half?!

You can't finish in an hour and a half, you big cheater.

That's exactly what I am, Ricky!

You said something more appropriate for running.

These guys can run 120km an hour!

Go on, get out of here.

This costume isn't working, is it?

I better get something better.

I don't know about a cheetah, but Gav can be a cheeky monkey.

Speaking of which, I'm going to do a picture of a baboon.

Baboon, it's a good word that, isn't it? Anyway.

I'll start by drawing quite a simple line drawing.

First, I'm drawing the baboon's nose.

I'm going to make this nice and dark so I can trace it later.

Glad I haven't got a baboon's nose.

Or have I?

A little beard.

Wish I had a beard like a baboon.

And a great big mane.

And finally, two eyes looking pretty baboony.

Now using another piece of paper I'm going to trace the mane.

This is going to be my template.

All will become clear later.

Just joining it up. Sweet.

Now I'm going to cut that out.

I'm not so worried about cutting into the inside shape here,

it's all about maintaining the shape on the outside,

because this is a stencil.

Now I need stencils of all the other parts of the baboon's face

so I'm going to use my ninja skills!

There we go.

Lovely. Won't be needing this.

I do need a fresh piece of paper and some chalk pastels.

So I'm going to start with the baboon's nose.

Pop it in the middle of the page.

Get some chalk pastels.

This chalk is going to help me recreate the colour grading

favoured by American artist, Georgia O'Keeffe.

Hey, Ricky, it's me.

-Hey, Georgia.

-I like to paint desert landscapes,

animal skulls and flowers.

Here is some of my work now.

Wow, I'd love to own some of your work, Georgia.

Well, unlikely, Ricky.

My painting, Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1,

sold for 44.4 million

and is the most expensive painting ever by a female artist.

I'm not sure this baboon will make me a monkey, ie £500.

Anyway, I best get on with it.

-Bye, Ricky!

-Bye!

I'm drawing with a chalk hostel around the outside of my stencil

and then rubbing the pastel in to get this lovely grading.

If you're worried about your stencil moving,

you can tape it down with a bit of masking tape

or use a little bit of sticky tack.

An important thing here is to blow off the excess pastel powder,

not to rub it, because you'll smudge your picture.

Now I'm going to move onto this bit, its kind of round blueish cheeks.

I'm being mindful not to overlap the colours,

so I'm just filling in the white spaces.

Give my hands a wipe.

It's important to have clean fingers when you change colours.

I'm going to do the main part of his face

using my lightest grey.

Now for the beard.

See, you don't always just fade inwards like this.

Another technique is to rub along the edge

and that gives you a more defined colour.

Moving onto my last stencil now and that's the mane.

The mane's pretty big.

So I want this colour to fade in quite a long way.

Now a little finishing touch of some eyes.

OK, let's see how it looks.

Oh, yeah!

A nice colour gradient for a Grade A picture of a baboon.

And I think it's so good, it deserves a frame.

When your picture's finished, you can fix the chalk pastel

with hairspray and it stops it from smudging.

Here's a quick art tip of how to draw a roaring lion.

So I'm going to start with his head.

That's going to be a big egg shape, wider at the bottom than at the top.

And in it I'm going to draw a big wide mouth.

Because he is roaring. A couple of teeth.

His tongue.

Lions have like little triangle noses.

Little eyes.

And then I'm going to draw a nice big mane.

So a wavy line like that, a couple of bits at the top.

Maybe some ears, just between the mane and the face.

The same distance between the two.

Now I'm drawing his front legs.

It's like two long stalks at the bottom.

Little balls for the feet.

Little lines for the separate toes.

Body in between. There's his little belly.

Out for his legs. Little wavy tail with a ruffly bit at the end.

And for the roar, I want like a big wave of sound coming out.

Draw these quick lines shooting out from him.

A couple of speed lines round the side just to give it the energy.

There we go.

Another quick art tip.

Did that picture just move?

Yeah. That's because it's animated.

I'm telling you, it's a magic box.

What are Rich and Ella doing?

-It's not a magic box.

-It is!

Totally magic, trust me.

Get in!

Whoa! Is this some kind of magic box portal?

No. It's thinking inside the box and outside the box.

Now to make this cool teleporting box animation,

you'll need a couple of cardboard boxes, a large open space,

some friends and a tablet with animation app installed.

And you can put it together in just three ninja moves.

Ninja move number one.

You need to delegate. You need one person to teleport,

one person to be the box master

and somebody to direct.

Ninja move number two.

Right, I'm going to set up our tablet device

and we're going to start shooting and just see where it takes us.

The fun here is working out how we're going to make Ella disappear

and reappear inside the boxes.

And top tip, if you angle the boxes at the right level,

you can hide behind them so it looks like

you're fully getting inside each time.

Ninja move number three.

We're going to be making an animation loop

which means will go to re-use the same frames.

It's going to look like Ella here is stuck flying between two boxes.

Now, because Rich is stood there,

he needs to stay as still as possible

while Ella moves across the floor.

And each time you move something, capture a frame.

OK, we've shot all of our frames.

We've added some cool sound effects.

I think it's time to take a look at our mini masterpiece.

Oh, sweet!

It's a pretty simple animation but it came out brilliantly.

What do you think, guys? Guys?

Guys?!

In the box.

Ah, better clean up these boxes, then.

Don't close the box! I'm inside the box. Richard, don't. Ahh!

I'm bursting for the loo.

PHONE RINGS

MACHINE BLEEPS

Hi, Ricky, it's your mum.

Hope I haven't stopped important business.

Oh, if only she knew.

Here's what's coming up on your number one show.

Stop talking about number ones.

Treesy does it with the masking tape.

Om!

This guy is anything but stony faced.

And where there's muck, there's art at the safari park.

-Bye, Ricky!

-Bye, Mum!

Ah, finally I can relax.

Ricky, Ricky, Ricky!

Spoke too soon.

Can you make art with twigs?

I could branch into it but not today.

SHE SIGHS

-Hey, Ricky.

-Hi.

Hey, it's Naomi and Ed.

How's it going, guys?

Great, thank you. We were just wondering,

do you think you can make anything out of these biscuits?

Er, no.

But I wouldn't mind one.

Thanks!

Ooh! That takes the biscuit.

Oops!

Hey, what have these guys got?

Ricky, can you make art with masking tape?

OK, I'm sticking with you.

Yeah!

So what are your names?

-Callum.

-And Kian.

Nice to meet you guys. And where are you from?

-Leicester.

-Leicester.

Masking tape is a great suggestion, I'll just go and grab some things.

I've got some watercolour paper.

Some water colour paints and I couldn't find any masking tape.

-Can I borrow yours?

-Yes.

OK.

Sweet. I'm going to use masking tape to make a wild picture.

So I'm going to start by taping it down to the table.

And that means that it won't move and when I'm getting the paper wet,

it won't all crease up. I'm going to take lines across the paper.

So what kind of art do you guys like to do?

-Drawing.

-What do you draw?

Superheroes.

Oh, cool. What kind of powers do they have?

-Lasers.

-Awesome.

I'm going to get a bit of masking tape and I'm going to cut down it

to create a thinner piece so I have different sizes on my picture.

Have you guys ever made art with masking tape?

-Yeah.

-What did you do?

-A mummy.

-A mummy?

I wrapped up my actual mummy.

Oh, your actual mum!

Poor mum. I'm going to add my slightly thinner one further back

and these masked-off lines are going to become trees later on.

So a thinner one further back would look like it's away in the distance,

using a little bit of perspective.

I've also got some slightly thinner strips of masking tape

and I'm going to start dotting these around across the others.

I'm really building up all the masking tape over my paper.

All right, guys, now I can start painting.

I'm going to start just by wetting my paper

so that it's ready for the paint.

I'm just going to wet it all up like this...

I'm going to start with some purple.

Guys, I'm doing a little technique here with the paint.

I'm mixing it all up to get a dappled light effect

so I don't have to be neat at all.

I can make a right mess.

THEY LAUGH

Now I'm going to move on to the top colour, and for that I'm going to do

a nice rich yellow, and that's because yellow

is the complementary colour of purple.

Literally, just going for it with the yellow now.

Do you like drawing at home?

If I'm watching TV, yeah,

I'll be sketching and drawing in my pad doing doodles.

I'm just dotting on a slightly darker colour now

and I want to dapple it a little bit more,

so I'm going to add a little bit of water and just drip it on.

My picture doesn't look amazing yet, but it will soon. Honest!

Now I need that to dry and I'm going to use my ninja skills.

There we go, lovely and dry.

Now I'm going to start peeling off the masking tape.

What's great here is all the places where the masking tape was

has been kept perfectly white

and I've got these really nice crisp lines.

-It looks really good!

-Ah, thanks.

Now I get to do the long ones.

Oh, look at that.

I have to be careful when I'm peeling off the masking tape,

just in case it takes off a bit of the paper as well

and ruins the picture, so I'm just taking my time.

Now I'm going to add some shadows.

So I'm going to add a little bit of grey all along one side

of all my white lines,

on the right-hand side of the vertical pillars

and on the underside of the diagonal ones

because the light is all coming from one direction, not the band.

Just doing some very quick horizontal and vertical marks,

with a couple of quick little diagonal ones.

I'm using a flat fine brush but you can just use a thin brush.

This is looking really good, guys. I hope you like it.

Are you ready to see it?

-BOTH:

-Yes!

Get a load of this!

You see what it is? They're trees with a lovely sort of purpley floor

and a beautiful dappled bright yellow sky.

Well, I think it's so good, it deserves a frame.

So, guys, what would you rate it?

-BOTH:

-We give it a ten!

Ah, great. Thanks for your suggestion, guys. Bye-bye.

Bye, Ricky!

STAMPEDE APPROACHING

What is that noise?

Sounds like a stampede.

-Gav, is that you?

-This costume is going to get buckets of sponsorship!

-You look ridic.

-Lucky I've got thick skin then.

CRASHING

Om!

Om!

-And you think I look silly!

-Shh, it's the Grand Master.

Om!

Very Zen(!)

Greetings, dudes!

Salutations, Grand Master.

What can you teach us, O wise one?

Lesson number 333 1/3 to enlightenment.

Decorative attachments for your cupboard of coldness!

Fridge magnets.

Yeah! Use a small stone, dude.

Paint it your favourite colour.

Oh, no! Oh!

Blue is not my colour.

Carry on painting, dudes!

Now, let it dry.

Stick on some googly eyes with strong glue.

Draw a funny mouth.

Stick a magnet on the back.

Ah, so cute.

Put it on your cupboard of coldness.

So cool!

Lesson number 333 1/3, complete.

Cool. You rock, Grand Master.

I am enlightened.

You are most welcome.

Om!

Anyway, how long have you got until the Bristol marathon starts?

Hmm, a little while, why?

Because I've got an idea for some art involving animals.

Sounds wild, let's do it.

Follow me.

Ninja skills!

Come on, Gav, I thought you said you were fit enough to run a marathon.

I haven't run so far in my life!

Ah, you're saying you've never run so far,

but you should be saying "so fari" because this is a safari park.

Who's this?

All right.

It sounds like Sarah. Sarah, is that you? Can you take your mask off?

Very funny(!) What are we doing here, anyway?

Well, all your animal antics have given me an idea for some art.

But first, we better get our ninja on.

Are you aping my style?

Art Ninja!

Strike a pose.

-Hiya.

-Hello.

OK, guys, this is Mark. He's a safari ranger

and he's going to be showing us where we can get our art materials from today.

Yeah, we're going to get your materials from the bottom of the park.

-Oh, poo.

-Exactly.

And Mark here is an poo expert so he's going to show us

-where we can find it.

-Shall we go?

Yeah.

I have a poo fact. Did you know that male hippos fling their poo around

-by swishing their tails to impress females?

-Oh, charming.

Well, we don't have hippos. We have rhinos.

They only poo in one spot and they stamp on theirs

to spread their scent around.

You asked for poo, and here it is.

So if you want to get stuck in?

Not the choice of words I would use, but, yeah, why not?

-Oh, yeah!

-Oh, that's hard.

Look at that poopy!

Right, guys, that's enough mucking about - and enough mucking out -

let's go get on with the art!

Come on, Gav, you can take that.

Yeah, this is heavy.

We've also borrowed some dung from these guys, the giraffes.

Well, I say borrowed, but I don't think they want it back.

Cheers, fellas!

PARP!

Oh, rude!

OK, guys, we've got our lovely tarpaulin canvas.

We've got our great art materials, the dung, and some sawdust bedding,

all from the safari park.

Ah! We're grown-ups and we're wearing gloves

and protective clothing so we can make art with some poo,

but I don't suggest that you do do this.

Ha-ha! He said doo-doo!

Good one, Gavin!

Let's get on with the picture.

This is the smelliest bit of art you've ever got us making, Rick.

It's got a pretty hefty whiff.

Oh, good work, Sarah, it's looking great.

Gav, if you can just sprinkle that over the brown bits,

gives it texture.

I am sprinkling poo.

-Hey, Sarah.

-Hi.

What do you get if you sit under a cow?

A bad joke?

A pat on the head!

Mark told me that one's called Ian.

All right, Ian?

-There's your giant bucket of poo, madam.

-Thanks!

I'm just about to run out of poo.

Don't worry, Sarah. We're nearly finished.

Wow!

Who knew you could make art from poo!

It's the Serengeti plains.

Thanks for all your help, guys.

And I've still got time to make the Bristol marathon and a half!

And I know just the animal costume I'm going to wear.

Good news, I got a text from Gavin.

He did his marathon in the end dressed as a giraffe.

And he persuaded Sarah to go as the giraffe's bottom.

Don't worry, I sponsored them both.

Today has taught me a valuable Art Ninja lesson.

26 miles in a suit is some run

but art using Rhino poo is my kind of fun.

If I never see another animal again, it'll be too soon.

Hi, mate!

HE SCREAMS