To get warmed up we would get the participants to pick their favourite colour that they would like to use and then their favourite animal or character that they would like to make. This generally worked quite well as it was not overloading information or giving too much pressure on what to make.

We would all sit at the table together and start building some shapes or characters – Danni was very good at directing others to make her horses for her, others were happy to sit and play with the plasticine until they had their puppets how they liked.

We had ideas ranging from a couple of elephants called William and George having a bath, to a full James Bond feature film (cut down to one scene once animation started).

Once they had one character they could start to animate which them gave more ideas for additional characters/story. The best thing to do was to get their puppets under camera before they were distracted by building a whole scene.

Another thing that worked really well was having one person pressing the capture button on the iPad and directing someone else to move the puppets and taking it in turns to direct. This was good as the process moved a lot faster, so they could do more with the time, and they seem to enjoy working as a team as they only had to concentrate on one thing e.g. moving puppets or taking pictures.

– Written by Sophie Marsh a workshop leader

Danni’s finished animation featuring horses

Two elephants, William and George, having a bath. A finished animation from the first workshop at Stalcombe House

A finished animation from the first Stallcombe House animation workshop featuring a James Bond styled scene

We set up a live green screen in the hall so that the residents could see themselves on a big tv projected against a background of their choice using green screen software. Lots of fun ensued!

We currently compositing all the captured footage together

Our first interactive workshop happened on the 24^th of March at Stallcombe House, and it was a fantastic success. The team from Calling The Shots brought two ‘workstations’ for the residents to use – a stop-motion clay animation table and an interactive green-screen. Residents really enjoyed making models from clay, developing a theme for their animations, learning how to use the software and actually animating their short films. Animals seemed to be somewhat of a popular theme during the day, with film clips about elephants and horses being two notable offerings. The green-screen room was also very popular, and for many of the participants something completely new for them to get involved with and have a go at. Residents seemed really happy to see themselves transported to scenes from their favourite television and films, with some people even enacting some of these scenes themselves.

We are in the process of organising our next workshop and we hope that it will be as successful as this one.

By the end of our first workshop the participants had created their own short films using stop-motion with the help of the teachers.

They created their own characters, stories and had used the stop-motion software to create their work.

We began the workshop introducing everyone to stop-motion animation, a process using multiple photos to create a moving image.

We started off exploring how stop-motion works with a few basic shapes and movements and everyone quickly got the hang of it