6 students, 2 months, 8 animations

In December we concluded our two-month-long series of animation workshops organized for grade 5-8 students. We worked with six enthusiastic and creative children, who gained lots of valuable theoretical and practical knowledge throughout the program. At the final meeting, the children and parents worked together to create animated greeting cards.

The first workshop, held in October, was followed by weekly two-hour sessions. The students first learned about the basic concepts of audiovisual media, and then they were introduced to the basic theoretical and practical aspects of animation techniques. They learned about space and time in film, tools used in the creation of films in general, as well as about techniques used in the creation of animated films.

From sketches to finalized animations

During the next few sessions, the students formed two groups and started collecting ideas to create their own animated movie. After the narratives had been outlined, they began to draw storyboards – an activity that helped them realize how much planning needs to be involved in the selection of ideas that can be expressed with devices capable of movement, as well as in choosing possible ways of expressing these ideas. Prior to the filming the students drew the sketches of the scenes, prepared the props and distributed the roles of the director, operator and prop master. After the preparations were complete, the participants launched into the actual filming.

Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are moved and photographed in small increments, so that they will create the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played back. The operator and the prop master watched each movement carefully, while the director surveyed the entire scene. Of course, the participants sometimes switched roles and helped out each other. Once the filming was complete, we started working together on the processing of the recorded material. We used editing programs to assemble the images and to add the sound cuts. The excellent teamwork resulted in two animated films, one featuring objects, and the other one featuring both objects and real people. The films can be viewed here:

Working on the final project in a Christmas atmosphere

During the second hour of the same session, we moved on to making video recordings. We began with a quick theoretical introduction, during which we discussed camera settings, angles, camera movement and cuts. At the Christmas fair, the students had the opportunity to practice what they had learned by creating short videos for our final project.

During the final session, held with the participation of the students’ parents, we created animated greeting cards by combining video images, stop motion animation and green box technique. Each team chose a previously recorded video to serve as a background for animated cut-out paper figures. The recording of the movement of the figures took place on the animation table in front of a green background, which in the editing phase was replaced with the selected video recording.

Finalized work:

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