Transforming Ideas into Animated Stories

Whether itʼs at the elementary, middle, or high-school level, making stop-motion animation movies with students always feels like storytelling magic.

When I accepted a position teaching summer school in 2021, stop-motion felt like a natural fit for a Career & Technical Education (CTE) course titled Arts & A/V. I hadn’t taught an audio-visual film production class before but had made stop-motion movies with fifth graders when I worked at an elementary school, and I figured this media would allow my eighth-grade summer school students the freedom to be as artsy or as techy as they wanted.

One of stop-motion’s strengths is that itʼs so easily adaptable, allowing students to choose their own materials, style, and storyline. I tell my students that their goal is not just to animate, but to become storytellers.

Program Overview
I’ve worked at this summer school program every year since, and creating these films has become an annual tradition.

The program is organized into two-week sessions, and throughout those two weeks the objective is to get students thinking about goals and making plans for high school while also exposing them to as many CTE topics as possible. Students take three CTE classes the first week, then switch to new ones the second week. Itʼs a challenge to make a stop-motion animated movie in only four or five days, but we make it happen.

Brainstorming and Ideation
On day one, we talk about character design and ideation. A big focus in CTE is career awareness, so we look at examples of character design programs and concept artists and talk about how in addition to a script, ideas get communicated through imagery.

Students have a brainstorm session to come up with a list of things they enjoy, and then we break that list down to look for interesting perspectives. “You like basketball? Okay, are you going to tell the story from your perspective, a different player’s, the coach’s, or maybe even the basketball itself?” There’s a lot of room to play with empathy and talk about what makes an interesting plot. “What issues or exciting event might pertain to a basketball team? What problems might a basketball have?” Having students tap into what they are passionate about is a wonderful way to kickstart their creativity.

On day two, students finish conceptualizing their characters, and we talk about setting and storylines. If students are having a hard time coming up with a climactic event, using the setting to emphasize or drive the plot is a great option.

Student Choice and Agency
Students choose whether their characters and sets are made digitally, with paper, modeling clay, or even with physical objects. This allows for a lot of variety and makes the finished works more personalized.

Students also decide if they want to animate with an app like Stop Motion Studio or use Google Slides to sequence their story. I tell them if they saw art on their schedule and got excited, awesome! They will probably want to draw and be creative with this process. If they came in and saw the computers and immediately thought, “Oh, thank god, a computer lab! There’s hope for me!” thatʼs also awesome! In a week-long summer school setting, I don’t have a lot of time to build a rapport with students, who come from all over our district and have a wide variety of backgrounds. This leaves me at the mercy of their preconceived relationship with art. The Google Slides option helps students who are intimidated by creativity feel like they can be successful.

Audio-Visual Editing
After a day of filming in Stop Motion Studio or creating slides in Google Slides, we edit on Clipchamp (clipchamp.com). Stop Motion Studio generates a video file for exporting, while Clipchamp allows students to screen record as they scroll through their slideshow.

After that, we add a title and credits, then students get to choose the audio component of their project: sound effects, music, voice-over, or a mix of these. For those short on time, music is a quick and easy way to set the mood. Clipchamp has some stock music and sound effects, but talking about Foley artists (artists who recreate realistic sounds for films) and having students make their own sound effects is fun, too.

Film Festival Finale
Our final class is Movie Festival Friday! We make popcorn and kick back to watch all the student films. If we have extra time, we look at more professional examples and dive into the different types of animation that have developed since stop-motion. All in all, it’s a wonderful whirlwind of a week, and such an empowering glimpse into how these students see and experience the world.