I had the opportunity to conduct an Animation 101 workshop for the students of Evergreen School. The workshop was aimed at introducing teenagers to the basics of animation and giving them a taste of the endless possibilities that the medium has to offer. As I began planning for the workshop, I knew that I wanted to create an environment that was both fun and educational. I decided to focus on the traditional animation techniques that we still use today in 2D, stop-motion animation and CGI animation.

It's nerve-racking enough entering a pitch meeting with adults but at least they smile politely when you bore them or nod even if they don't understand what you are saying; kids aren't like that, especially not teenagers. The students at Evergreen had agreed to attend my workshop 'Animation 101', but it was the first of its kind. Although I had experience teaching children and tutoring adults, and I'm no stranger to public speaking, I know teenagers are a particularly tough crowd. While waiting for them to all enter, I couldn't help but think: 'What have I gotten myself in to?!' Even though I spent hours going through all my slides trying to make the workshop as accessible as possible without patronising my audience, it was a tough one to judge. Thoughts were running through my head like 'Should I have I included Disney stuff if they are teenagers?' and 'Are they going to find that bit boring?' etc, etc.
My brief was - essentially - explain how animation is made to someone who is starting as a complete beginner. Now, on the surface this sounds like a rather simple brief, but after working, living and breathing animation for so long I found the task of simplicity deceptively complicated. I wanted the workshop to be informative, whilst not getting bogged down in the technical, but most of all I wanted it to be inspiring. In the end I broke the lecture down to a few major points to make life easier for myself. The main points I wanted to get at were:
An Intro - to get the audience fired up and ready to talk about animation (and to calm my nerves)
Different types of animation - including their similarities and differences
A 'How it all works' section - talking about how we go from an idea to animation that we can see on the T.V. / in the cinema
And 'Different animation techniques' section - learning about how we go from a shot to a finished piece of animation
Then finally a 'There's so much more to learn' slide - detailing where to go next with useful books and website links



The first part of the workshop began with an exciting video showing the evolution of animation from 1899 to modern day. Once the lights came back, there was a stunned silence... then one person said 'I love Prince of Egypt' and I knew it was going to be OK!
Although I included a lot of other types or animation, such as Stop Motion and CGI, I wanted to focus on 2D to give the young people the vocabulary and technical terms to search up more information about specific problems, and give them the first steps in how to think like an animator.
At first I was really blown away with how engaged and excited the group were; even the quietest students were soon shouting out answers to questions and responding really positively to each slide. I was aware the content could get quite dense and technical so I made sure the workshop was more like a conversation - asking lots of questions and letting the students 'discover' the answer with my guidance.
Soon, they had the confidence to ask complex questions and come up to the front and show and talk about their work, which I loved to see, and we worked through problems and questions they had specific to their own work as a class.
Towards the end of the workshop we asked if they would like to do something like this again, and with the resounding 'Yes!' from the crowd, relief washed over me as I thought 'I did it! It was a success!'. The students were engaged and excited about learning about animation and I could see the passion for animation growing in each and every one of them. It was an absolute blast to talk all things animation with people that were just as in to it as I am, it reminded me why I became an animator in the first place. I would love to put all of the knowledge the students had learned into practice - so watch this space, I may or may not be already working on the next one! Thanks Evergreen for the opportunity, and I really couldn't have done it without 1 Mill Street and their amazing staff for hosting in their fantastic and beautiful facilities, organising the event, and continual support - you guys are awesome.

(Picture courtesy of 1Mill Street)
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