Animation Workshop in Mexico

Between January 22 and February 2, 2007, Karin Gunn, the Digital Animation and Photography Teacher at West Port High School in Ocala, traveled with Dr. Melanie Davenport of Florida State University to offer an intensive workshop at a school in Estipac, Mexico called Centro Rural de Educacion Superior (CRES).

They brought equipment and expertise to this village about an hour south of Guadalajara to train students, teachers, and pre-service teachers in various techniques for creating and teaching about Animation.

The animation workshop was a great success thanks to iStopMotion. The preview overlay feature greatly assisted the High School students in creating two animated shorts, one in cut paper about a day in the life of the school, and another using claymation to represent a traditional Wixarika story about the origins of the five colors of corn.

In addition, teacher certification students also used iStopmotion to film their lower-technology methods for making animation such as phenakistoscopes, flipbooks, and pixilation. These video clips were later imported to Final Cut Express where music, subtitles, and credits were added.

"The whole school and community came to watch the final viewing and everyone was really impressed!", says Karin.