Monsters! StoryPlanet Workshop

Based in Toronto, Story Planet is a non-profit that offers free workshops to support children and youth (ages 6-18) in becoming creative and effective communicators. I ran this animation workshop shortly after Halloween. Kids created their own monster characters out of felt, then animated a monster adventure - all in under two hours! This is the result.

In order to jump into animating so fast, I constructed a special "animation light table" which was set up and lit in advance. The coffee-table sized "set" was contained underneath a large sheet of plexiglass, including the lights. The camera was mounted on an arm looking down into the plexiglass, which was attached to the table. With everything built into a single unit, the setup was very "bump" friendly (bump the table, and the camera/lights move with it, so there's less of a "jittery" look). The kids could sit around the table and slide their characters on top of the glass. All the fun of stop-motion animation, without the usual frustrations.