Day of the Dream 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 give yourself a helping hand.

Yeah, check that out.

We'll be bowled over with a tasty treat.

Oh, yeah!

And things get surreally weird when we dream up something strange.

Because today it's...

It's a new day.

I just had the strangest dream.

I'd better get my ninja on.

And my clothes.

I've been having some really strange dreams recently.

I need to write this one down in my journal.

I was having an argument about famous artists with a lobster.

Well, I like Salvador Dali.

Dali is so overrated.

You know nothing of the art.

All right, no need to get crabby.

I know what you're thinking -

why does a lobster speak with a French accent?

And I don't know. And I also don't know why he was giving it all that.

Anyway, time to quit daydreaming and do some art.

I've had so many dreams recently, I feel a bit tired.

I need a hand. Or maybe I need...

the Art Ninja giant hand.

So, I've got a nice big piece of card

and, using my hand as a guide, I'm going to draw a massive hand.

Lovely. Cut that out.

It's looking pretty good.

I need a strap so I can wear the hand,

so I'm going to make that by rolling up a piece of corrugated cardboard.

I'm going to hold that together with some masking tape.

And do another one.

It's looking pretty good.

Now I need to pad it out to look like a real hand.

So, I'm going to roll up some newspaper into sausage shapes

and wrap them round the fingers. Go round like that.

I'm using masking tape just because papier-mache sticks to it better.

Sticky tape has kind of got a glossy coating and the glue

doesn't take to it very well.

Now I'm doing the palm.

Have a look at your own hand and see where the muscle's built up.

So, I've got this big pad here for my thumb. There.

And then I'm going to wrap some newspaper around the wrist.

I'm wrapping whole pages over like this just to smooth it off a bit.

Right, it's all held down nice and tight, ready to papier-mache.

So, I've got some mix here, two parts glue, one part water,

and some little squares of newspaper.

I'm going to give it a good, generous covering.

You need to do maybe two or three layers of this and that's just

to stiffen it up and make it nice and strong, ready for painting.

It's messy, but so relaxing to do.

Right, I'm going to add a bit of detail to the front now.

That is going to be some nails.

So I've cut out some card.

I'm not going to papier-mache over the tip of the nails so the nails

still have a nice sharpness to them.

And just one layer should do it here.

That needs to dry.

Nailed it!

That's ready for painting. My flesh colour.

You can mix up a colour that matches your skin.

Great. I need that to dry and to add some detail,

so I'm going to use some ninja skills.

Yeah, check that out!

Now, I've added some detail here with some darkening of the knuckles

to give them definition, and I've painted the nails to make them look

more realistic. Now for some finishing touches.

How about a thumb ring made from gold card?

And a nice friendship band made from plaited paper.

Well, I think that deserves a big hand.

APPLAUSE Thank you.

You don't have to make a giant hand.

How about a big, hairy foot with colourful nails?

Or a monster claw?

It gets a thumbs-up from me.

So many dreams.

Oh, here's one where I'm free-falling.

Let me see if I can remember it.

Whoa!

SEAGULL SQUAWKS

Arrrk! Are you the Art Ninja? Can I have your autograph?

I can't right now, it's just a flying visit.

Whoa!

Wake up, Ricky, it is the famous Belgian artist Rene Magritte.

Well, I hope you're having some surreal dreams, Ricky.

Surreal. Hm.

My art was very surreal.

I often put objects in front of each other.

In life, everything we see hides another thing.

Anyway, Ricky, I see you are still asleep, so I'd better go.

Toodle-pip, as you English say.

I don't know why.

It's a new day. I'd better get my...

Oh, I must have fallen asleep on the sofa.

And I don't know why, but I feel the urge to make a hat inspired

by Rene Magritte. So, I've got a long strip of black card.

I'm going to measure it around my head.

You need to make sure the hat fits!

Not too tight. There we go.

I'm going to hold that in place with some sticky tape.

And cut off the excess.

I'm going to get a bit of black card and I'm going to draw a bowler hat,

as Magritte often featured them in his paintings.

I'm using a white pen here so you guys can see it on the black card.

I'm going to cut that out.

I'm cutting inside the white line

so there'll be no white on my finished piece.

Rene Magritte famously painted a figure with an apple in front of

their face, but I'm going to do a burger.

So we need to get some cotton thread ready

to hang on the inside of the hat.

There we go.

I've got three little strips of card that I'm gluing together to make

a buffer to hold the burger away from my face.

Pop that on the inside of my hat.

And stick that onto my band.

Now, it's already pretty fetching,

but it's going to look even better soon.

Now to make my burger.

So, I'm drawing out its different layers.

The top bun. That's the beef patty.

Or it could be veggie. Here's the bottom part of the bun.

Now I'm going to paint my separate layers.

To get the right bun colour

I've got some white, yellow, gold and brown.

Now, using the same colours I'm going to move on to the top bun.

If you want to try this at home, make sure you put some paper down.

I'm adding a bit of darker brown to the edges of the bun

and blending it in to give it a bit more shape and form.

Finally, for the patty, which is a beef patty -

it's going to be darker,

so I'm going to mix the brown with a bit of black.

There we are.

The top of the bun here, I'm adding seeds with a white pen.

If you don't have a white pen, you can use paint and a fine brush.

As a last little finishing touch, I've cut out some coloured card.

I've got some cheese, lettuce and tomato.

And now I'm going to glue all the layers of my burger together.

Here we go.

Bit of healthy lettuce.

Couple of bits of tomato.

Finally, the bun on the top.

There we go, that is looking totes delish.

Now I'm going to attach it to the thread on the back of my hat.

And that's just with a bit of sticky tape.

It's time to put on this tasty hat.

Oh, yeah!

Rene Magritte was known for painting his pictures

with a beautiful blue sky. There's no blue sky out there today,

so I'm going to dream one.

HE SNORES

You could also make this top hat with hanging pineapple.

Or how about this crown and cupcake combination?

Nice.

KNOCKING

-Hi, Gav.

-Wow, that's a big yawn.

-Are you OK?

-Just a bit tired.

I've not been sleeping much recently. I've been dreaming loads.

Funny, I've been reading about dreams.

What have you been dreaming about?

-Lobsters.

-Lobsters, let me see.

It could mean that you're anxious.

And I've been falling through the sky.

Let me have a look. Hm.

It could mean that you're worried about something.

And I had a dream I went off to make art and forgot to get my ninja on.

Ninja...

..skills?

THEY SNIGGER

Aah!

Hm. You must be insecure.

That's funny, I've been feeling a bit insecure recently.

I feel like none of my friends are listening to me.

Hm? I'm just going to make myself a snack.

You don't mind, do you, mate?

See what I mean?

Here's a quick art tip of how to draw someone sleeping.

I'm going to start with the head.

So, have a nice, big, wide mouth because he's going to be snoring.

A little nose, little Us for his eyes, to show that they're closed.

And slightly raised eyebrows.

It looks like he's relaxed.

I'm going to have the arms down like this,

just coming over the line of the duvet.

The pillow behind his head.

Draw the bed posts up here.

And now the bottom bed posts,

cos they're going to be the thing closest to me.

Bed goes down like that.

Couple of his feet in bed.

And how do you know someone's sleeping in a drawing?

Draw some Zs.

Little snore-y marks.

There you go.

Another quick art tip.

I know I'm not dreaming this -

that picture definitely moved.

That's because it's animated.

Oh, guys, isn't it nice to have a little walk around Bristol

-at night-time, to see all the landmarks lit up beautifully?

-Yeah.

Yeah, the path in the sky.

-You know, the...

-The thingy thing.

Guys, guys, don't worry.

I've got your back.

Get a load of my light painting sign animation.

Now, you won't be lost in the dark with this animation, and to make it

you'll need a camera that shoots long exposures,

a tablet or smartphone,

a posse of friends...

HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYS

..and a lovely lit-up building at night.

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

Ninja move number one.

You decide what building you're going to make a sign for

and then you need to make your sign.

So I'm doing the Clifton Suspension Bridge because

it's a Bristol icon and it's well dench.

And just to make sure I spell it all right

I've got it written down on a little bit of paper here,

cos spelling's not my strong suit.

Now you colour it in.

It doesn't need to be coloured in super-perfect,

because it's going to be quite blurry

when you light paint with it later.

Now I need to colour around all the letters carefully with a dark pen.

The reason I am colouring around all the letters in a black pen

is because black doesn't show up when you light paint.

Ninja move number two.

So, now I need to film it on my smartphone

and move along with this black bit of card

with a little slit cut in it,

and the black won't show up when I light paint later.

Mind your fingers.

Ninja move number three.

Now it's time to start shooting.

So one person needs to be ready to hold the shutter open

and somebody else needs to carefully play the video on the smartphone

and move it around perfectly, printing the sign in the air.

Once you've done that, you need to reposition the camera around

at a little bit of an angle so it feels like

you're moving around your landmark.

It just gives it a more dynamic look.

If you take about 12 frames,

you can bounce backwards and forwards to make a cool animation.

OK, we've shot all of our frames

and we've consolidated them into an animation.

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

You don't have to do landmarks,

you can do your friend's name and just make animations of each other.

Have you got anything for a snack?

There should be some cheese in the fridge.

Ooh!

Wow, Ricky, you've got a lot of cheese in.

Well, I like cheese.

PHONE RINGS

Ah, speaking of cheesy, it's my mum.

-'Hi, Ricky, it's your mum!'

-Told you.

'Hope you're doing something a bit more MATURE than normal.

'Here's a SLICE of what's coming up.'

You're trading cheese boards for skateboards

with the ninja apprentices,

swapping sweet dreams for sheep ones with this little lamp,

and you'll be exchanging nightmares for neon dreams

with this glow-in-the-dark art.

-'I don't know how you dream it all up. Bye!'

-Bye.

Right, let's get stuck into that cheese.

Hey, Gav, wait...

That's mature(!)

Ricky, Ricky, Ricky!

Hi, guys, what can I help you with?

Can you make art with a sponge?

Way too squeezy. I need a tougher assignment than that.

Aww...

-Hi, Ricky.

-Hi, guys.

We wondered what you could make with these balloons.

What, one of these balloons?

Here's one I inflated earlier!

I think someone's getting a little bit too big for their ninja boots.

It's all right, I've got this.

Hey, what have these guys got?

Ricky, can you make art out of an old spray bottle?

I'd SPRAY I can. I choose you.

Yes!

-So, what are your names?

-My name's Alexandra.

My name's Abra.

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

-London.

Well, it's a great suggestion.

I'm going to go and grab a few bits.

Wow, loads of stuff today.

So, I've got my spray bottles that I filled up with paint and water.

I've got some modelling clay and some sticky tack.

I've got a piece of cardboard

that I've cut into the shape of a skateboard...

'I'll tell you why later!'

..and I've got just a sheet of card here

that I'm going to draw my design on.

I want something from the sea.

-Fish?

-Yeah, I'm going to go for a fish skeleton.

So I'm going to start by drawing a triangle-shaped skull.

So, do you guys like to do art?

Yeah.

I like to create things like bookmarks.

I like to write stories.

So that's perfect. If you write a story,

you can then make a beautiful bookmark to save your place.

Yeah.

Do you want to see my fish so far?

I'm going to cut this out, because it's going to be my stencil.

Now, I'm going to cut out the eye of the fish.

So, to protect the table,

I'm putting a little bit of modelling clay down

and I'm going to poke a hole with the pencil

so I can get my scissors in there.

There you go.

Now I cut that out.

-OK, so I have my fish now all cut out.

-Wow!

Now I'm going to hold my fish on the cardboard

with a little bit of sticky tack.

I'm using small blobs,

pushing down the sticky tack so it's stuck nice and flush.

Using my fish as a stencil,

I'm going to use the spray bottles to make a graffiti skateboard.

I'm going to start spraying over the skateboard.

I've put a big bit of card down here to protect my table,

so if you're doing this at home, I suggest a big bit of newspaper.

-What's your favourite colour?

-Purple.

That's good, because I'm going to start with purple.

I've mixed together paint and water to get it to just

the right consistency that it will spray out.

Here we go.

The great thing about this is you don't have to be too neat.

My favourite colour is green.

And currently, this colour green.

Now I'm going to move onto yellow.

-That is bright, isn't it?

-Yeah.

I want my skateboard to be super bright.

Do you have pink?

Let's have a look.

That's my favourite colour, too.

So this is all your favourite colours, then.

I reckon you'll like it.

I've got one colour left.

Orange.

It's looking pretty good.

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

There we go, lovely and dry.

I've got a couple of finishing touches I want to do.

I'm going to give it a black outline

and it'll really make the colours pop.

Round to the other tail.

There we go. I'm going to turn it over.

I've got some fizzy drinks cans that I've painted

with paint mixed with PVA glue, so it sticks to the metal.

And I'm going to stick these to the underside of my board

to be the wheels.

And now, finally, for the reveal,

I can peel off my fish to reveal my custom grip tape job.

This is kind of beautiful art all on its own.

So, are you guys ready to see it?

Yes.

What do you think of that?

Whoo!

-Would you get on board with this at home?

-Yes.

What would you score it out of ten?

-Ten!

-Oh, wow! Look at those lovely tens.

You know what? I'll hang it on the wall.

-Thanks for your suggestion, guys, you've been brilliant. Bye-bye.

-Bye!

Finally, I can eat some cheese.

I've been thinking. You've had a lot of strange dreams, right?

-Right.

-And you've been eating a lot of this.

What can I say? I'm going through a little bit of a cheese phase.

And have you been eating it late at night?

-Yeah.

-Well, that explains the dreams.

But it just tastes so good!

Let's take pictures with our dream cheeses.

-Cheese selfies!

-Say cheese!

Oh, I'm tired after that.

-Aah!

-Ommmm!

I think I'm seeing things.

Don't worry, I know this guy.

Whoa!

I'm OK, man.

It's the Grand Master.

Greetings, dudes!

Good to see you. Sorry, yawn coming.

-Ooooh!

-Whoa!

Sorry about that.

Step number 101 to enlightenment.

Ruminate mammal for room illumination.

-Ah. Sheep lamp.

-Yeah!

Apparently, counting sheep is good for sleep.

Yeah, let's go!

Get a clean plastic milk bottle.

Squash it.

Cut it in half.

Oh, no! My beard.

Careful, dudes! Plastic can be sharp.

Cut a straight diagonal line.

Paint the milk bottle lid.

And four smaller ones.

Glue cotton wool to the plastic with PVA.

This blob's the sheep's tail.

Glue on the four bottle tops for feet.

Use strong glue, dudes.

Put the lid back on for the nose.

Stick on ears...

..eyes...

..and a tongue.

Put the battery-operated lights inside

and push the two halves together.

-Illuminating and ruminating.

-BAA!

Sheep of light for sleeping at night.

Lesson 101 complete.

Nice one, Grand Master.

I'm enlightened.

-Literally.

-You are most welcome.

SHEEP BAA

The sheep are making me sleepy.

THEY SNORE

Ommm!

I was going to do some epic art,

but I think we should just have an epic nap first.

On your bike!

On your little tail! Lobster, get away.

VOICE ECHOES

Gavin? Are you awake?

Quite clearly.

Hang on.

I'm not in my flat. I must be dreaming again.

VOICE ECHOES

Ah, slippers.

Seeing as I'm here, I might as well look around.

Ninja skills.

-Ricky!

-VOICES ECHO

It's me, Sarah.

-What are you doing here?

-How are you?

-What's in the box?

-It's from your dad.

Oh, it's masking tape, loads of it.

In really vivid colours.

Like your vivid dreams.

I've been having a lot of nightmares recently.

SCREAMING

-What was that?

-Maybe it's something from your nightmares. The bogeyman!

VOICES ECHO

It's not a bogeyman, it's bogey Rich. I've got a cold, OK?

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

Rich? Matt? What are you doing in my dream?

We're here to keep things surreal.

It looks like you've got some great art materials there, Ricky.

You're right, and this has given me an idea to make art

to break the cycle of my recurring lobster nightmare.

But first, we'd better get our ninja on.

Art Ninja! Strike a pose.

Where are you?

Art Ninja.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

Art Ninja.

What a nightmare.

We're going to make a massive surreal scene

on this wall and the floor around good old Sleeping Beauty here.

Let me sleep, Ricky.

And as I'm trying to break my cycle of nightmares,

this scene is going to be very dramatic.

Take some tape

and get to work.

(He caught it. It's because it's a dream.)

The colour's coming out really nicely against the black wall.

HE SNORES

What are you doing there, then, Ricks?

I'm going to fill this in like a chessboard.

I can't wait to see what this is going to look like.

I think you're in for a treat,

because this bit of art has a secret up its sleeve.

Ricky, Ricky!

-What?

-I'm the tape ninja.

There's only one ninja around here.

That's me.

Now for one last finishing touch.

-Check it out, guys, what do you think?

-Oh, wow!

-It's amazing.

-Real nice.

-That really is bright.

You haven't seen anything yet.

When I kill the lights and add a spot of UV,

it's going to get really illuminating.

The art's great, but is it enough

to break my cycle of lobster nightmares?

What do you think, Gav?

HE SNORES

Well, there's only one way to find out. Back into bed.

Ah.

That was weird. Gav?

Gav?

I can't tell if any of what just happened was real, or just a dream.

Today's taught me a valuable Art Ninja lesson -

recurring dreams about crustaceans

can make you overnight art sensations!

Even if it was all a dream, it was definitely fun.

Night.

I can't sleep.

I can't stop thinking about the talking lobster,

apple heads, and cheese.

Hi, Ricky! It wasn't a dream.

Aaarrrggghh!