A busy, fun session at Teignmouth Pavilions last Wednesday with a group of super-creative and focused children making their own spin on the Lilo and Stitch film as a stop-motion animation.
Here’s what they produced – in two hours!
Virtual Recipe Book for Gaza
I’m taking part in an online project called “Virtual Hug for Gaza”. It’s organised by a wonderful illustrator called Yulia Gwylim, and seeks to raise funds for locally-based, Palestinian-run charities providing food and healthcare in Gaza. Each contributor offers an illustrated favourite recipe to the online zine – I’m really looking forward to see what people “serve up”. You can download a copy of this lovely recipe zine here!
At this time, the situation in Gaza is dire, and we are presented daily with horrific scenes of starved children, bulletridden bodies and destroyed homes and lives. To not do something to try and help, however small, seems unthinkable.
If you are feeling helpless in the face of the suffering in Gaza maybe you can do one of the following?
Donate to Gazan mutual aid charities, such as thesameerproject
Organise or take part in a fundraiser for Gazan charities including Medical Aid for Palestinians
In the UK you can email your local MP, also the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary ( fcdo.correspondence@fcdo.gov.uk)
Join a demonstration in your area
Here’s the illustration, plus a couple of process pictures, I made to go with my recipe – it’s a Greek type of frittata called Sfougato Me Lahanika, and the recipe is from Mediterranean Vegetable Cookery by Rena Salaman. It’s delicious, as are many of the other recipes in the book.
“Sea Crowns”
The guys became sea goddesses for the day at our last session! We made painted and printed papers then used templates to cut and stick our beautiful crowns with coloured fish, shells, mermaids and seaweed.
The original idea came from a similar workshop activity by Zanna Hubbard, whose illustration and art I LOVE!
Ancient Sea Monsters at Paignton Library
Hi Everyone
Here’s the final compilation of all your brilliant animations. You all did so well and it was lovely working with you! 🙂
How to Train your Dragon Animations – Teignmouth Pavilions
Here are the animations everyone made at last Wednesday’s workshop. Thanks so much for coming, everyone, you all did brilliantly!
“How to Train Your Dragon” Stop Motion Workshop
Come and join me at the Pavilions Theatre Teignmouth on July 30 to make your very own “How to Train Your Dragon” 2D stop motion animation.
Make and animate your own Toothless and Hiccup, or invent your own dragon and flying Viking riding across the sea and through the sky! See all the details below – call the Pavilions box office on 01626 249049 or go online here to book
Dress for (a little bit of) mess, aprons provided.
Wednesday 30 July 10.30am-12.30pm
£15.00 per child
Ages 7-12
12 places available
Parents must stay for session with children under 8
Snow White Diorama Workshop!
Hello! I’ll be running a children’s craft workshop at the Pavilions Theatre in Teignmouth next Wednesday 28th May!
We’ll be making a folding diorama of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves House – it’s a simple make, all you have to do is draw and colour your house and the characters 🙂
Go to the Pavilions Website for details and to book, or call them on 01626 249049.
Hope to see you there!
“Shoe People”
I’ve joined Orange Beak Studio’s Picture Book Club 🙂 There are different options that you can subscribe to (it’s a Patreon-thing) so for about £5 per month I get these great prompts for making illustrations. Last month we were given lots of different types of shoes and asked to develop characters from their footwear.
There used to be a nutty kids’ animation series called “Shoe People” It made me think of that… There’s a clip at the end of this post.
In the meantime, here are the characters I created:
Small World Animations – where Fireball XL5 meets Button Moon!
Scouring the backwaters of the ITV Hub for a period drama to watch (!!), I came across Fireball XL5 – all the complete series. An early 1960s Gerry Anderson “Supermarionation” (yes, that’s where Super Mario gets his name from) children’s series, I absolutely LOVED this when I was a little kid, and would always watch it, so long as our telly was working – not always a given in the middle of Dartmoor in the 1960s.
Here’s the first episode of Fireball XL5.
I remember it mainly for being the first thing I ever had a dream about, so I knew it had caught my five year-old imagination. However, it seems to have been more influential than I realised, as watching it again today, I see how much Shimmer and Disappear, the music video I animated in 2018, was inspired by it.!
You can find all the episodes of Fireball XL5 here on ITV (in the UK). It’s definitely worth a look. Even though some of the attitudes and views are pretty dated, the craft and the visual storytelling are extraordinary. Not so sure my effort quite lives up to it…! 🙂
In fact, my animation has been described as having more of a “Button Moon vibe”!
To give you an idea, here’s a still from Button Moon:
Coincidentally, all the series of Button Moon are also on the ITV Hub, so that’s where to head if this post has sparked your interest in British Sci-Fi Puppetry TV Shows For Kids!
“The Herds”
This is an amazing puppetry project, featuring life-size cardboard puppets of animals that will be walked across the world from the Congo to Trondheim in the Arctic Circle. Animals all over the planet are facing life-threatening dangers from global warming – this project aims to highlight the peril that they, and we (also animals), are all facing.
On the website you can sign up for the Newsletter to receive updates on the journey taking place from now till end August, and there are great education resources, including downloadable Puppet-making workshops! 🙂 I’ve uploaded the Pangolin here – it’s a bit fiddly, but worth the effort, and the materials (ie cardboard!) are very accessible.