Grad students teach fourth and fifth graders how to animate their own films during a week-long camp run by a partnership between UCF and Page 15.
Thanks to an intensive weeklong storytelling and animation summer camp run by a partnership between downtown Orlando’s Page 15 and UCF’s Center for Research and Education in Arts, Technology and Entertainment (CREATE), fourth and fifth grade children are creating animated films.
The animation camp was an extension of Page 15’s popular Young Writers Summer Camp. Nearly 30 children arrived every day at 9 a.m. and spent the next three hours alongside mentors — students from UCF’s College of Community Innovation and Education and the College of Arts and Humanities — working on writing, illustrating and publishing their own book.
After lunch, a portion of the group migrated to the animation camp from 1 to 4 p.m., which was run by graduate students specializing in animation. Stella Sung, director of UCF CREATE and a Pegasus Professor, says all of the materials used in the camp — from pencils to paper to tablets — were of the same quality that UCF students and industry professionals use daily.
“We wanted the kids to understand this is the expectation and level of excellence we would want to see in the future,” she says. “They were small, short little pieces, but what folks don’t always understand is even five to 10 seconds of animation is a lot of work because everything is made. Every movement, every color, every line is made by somebody. Not only did the kids come up with the characters, but they found things they like and things they wanted to see or be or experience or imagine. I think these are the kinds of skills that translate into larger life skills.”
Read the full story at UCF Today.
View the UCF Summer Animation Feature Film “Stop Motion Circus”: