Programming Update: Animation Camp!

A couple of weeks ago we completed another successful week-long Animation Camp here at Reel Grrls. Open to young women ages 9-19, registration was so high that this ended up being our BIGGEST camp ever, with over 20 new and returning participants!

We had an incredible group of mentors for the camp, including animators Tess Martin, Celena Adler, Nickey Robare, Katie Gregg and Suzanne Twining (who worked on the Academy-award nominated feature "Coraline"!), as well as RG alumnae Sarah (who graduated way back in 2002!) and Kinsey.

Participants tried out a few different kinds of animation: paper cut-outs on lightboxes, claymation, stop-motion with toys and objects, pixellation using SLR cameras and computer animation using After Effects. We also learned about the history of animation and discussed media literacy with regards to our favorite animated media (have YOU ever stopped to think about the female characters in popular animated film & TV shows?).

By day 2 we were ready to think about creating our final pieces. Everybody had a chance to pitch a story that they thought would be pretty cool to animate, and we voted on our favorites. After choosing 6 amazing stories, participants broke up into groups and started pre-production.

After that it was animate, Animate, ANIMATE!! It was so much fun around here, with animation stations set up in every corner of every room and all around our neighborhood. Everywhere you looked there was clay, glitter, paint, paper of all shapes and colors, wigs, ketchup & mustard bottles with faces, and just a general amazingness of chaotic creativity. Not to mention tripods, camera, lights and computers. Awesome!!

Participants also learned about soundtrack creation and how adding music and sound effects to animations really make them come to life. In the eleventh hour, yours truly even helped out with foley sound effect creation in one of the films, by tapping into my secret talent: burping on cue!

The friends and family screening for our Animation Camp was completely packed, and everyone was so impressed with the completed films. Below is a small sample of the awesomeness. You can watch all the films on our Vimeo workshop page, and check out all the photos at our flickr site. See you next time!

Mamma Knows Best from ReelGrrls Workshops on Vimeo.