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It's just cool how you can make something
that isn't really supposed to move just come to life.
It's about as close to magic as you can get.
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Animation Camp at Film Scene was two weeks
where we worked with two different age groups of
kids, upper elementary and then junior high students,
and they had a week to make a movie.
This was the first year we've done it.
It kind of sprang out of this curriculum I've been
writing for animation with students, K-12 year olds.
Film Scene is an independent movie house in
Iowa City that tries to put forth educational
programs and so they wanted to do something
where they were getting youth involved in
filmmaking early on.
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Rather than me going over technique and a
bunch of boring stuff we just dived right into us
letting them play with the software.
Kids have kind of that sense of play even when
they're drawing or they're making things.
They'll kind of come up with voices of what their
drawings are saying and what their drawing might
be doing.
And this is a way to the things that are in their
imagination to make it come alive.
Well, we animated with clay.
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And shoes.
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And with other objects.
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And we also did some smaller activities
where we animated these colored pencils.
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My favorite project I think was when
we used clear sheets and then a background but in
the real world and put it over that and just
switched the sheets.
And at the end we got to do a big project, which is
where we had a group and we made it into a longer
project and displayed it here at Film Scene for the
very end of animation camp.
I don't remember how we came up with it.
It was kind of a collaboration, just taking
all of our ideas and putting them together.
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It was definitely a very intense week of
animation.
I'm just blown away by what the kids came up
with.
It went great.
I think it really exceeded our expectations and they
were showing us things that we could do on the
iPads.
I think at animation camp I was probably more
creative than I've ever been.
What I hope students take away more than anything
from this is that they can do this entirely on their
own, without an adult's help, without a teacher's
help.
Not just professional people can make films.
Anyone can make films.
I could make films.
I came into it not knowing anything about animation
and I ended up making a really cool project.
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I think the most fun part for me was
learning about the different kinds because I
wasn't aware of a lot of the different ways that
you make animation and videos and stuff.
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It really allowed us to reach new limits
with our creativity and it was just a great
experience in all.
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