On Monday, my colleague Matthew and I, accompanied by two work experience lads, went to Wanstead High School to run an animation day on the theme of Dr Who.
We worked with twenty young people from Yr 7 to Yr 9 and took them through the stages of creating a stop frame animation using the ever brilliant ‘iStopMotion’ from Boinx. Adding audio using Garage Band from Apple was also included in the day and we then created videos for YouTube.
The children had not made an animation before this, although several had used Mac computers and were familiar with Garage Band. Given the relative lack of experience with the software they were very easily able to achieve a result… but we already know that the vast majority of children that age, when given the right tools and right challenge, will work their socks off to get their ideas translated into film.
It was a delight to work with such a focussed group, and our thanks go to Carolan Murray for inviting us to the school. The workshop was arranged through various email messages, and Carolan had no real idea of the quality (or otherwise!) that she would get by inviting us in… hopefully we didn’t disappoint!