Halloween Anijam Begins!

Thousands of students compete every year in the 24 Hour animation contest and have 24 hours to create a 30 second animated film. I would like to invite anyone who would like to create a short 3 second animated film to join in a Halloween Anijam!

This Halloween will be the 100th anniversary of Houdini's departure and to help celebrate the season, I am hosting an Anijam where you can join in!

What is an Anijam? It's a collection of short animation pieces which are editing together to create a much longer animated film.

This Anijam will show scenes from Harry Houdini's life where each animator with start with a photo  and end with a different photo. In 36 drawings, the beginning image will transform into the final image. This is called Metamorphosis animation. The Metamophosis Illusion was performed by Harry Houdini and his wife Bess.

Here are a few examples of past Halloween Anijams.

If you would like to join in, all you need to do is take the first and last image you are given and create 36 drawings which animates the first image to the next. Your starting image and end image will be black and white, but you can add color to the other 36 if you like. 

Here are some of the photos you might be given.

        

Your AniJam movie file should be turned in before the deadline of 0ct 25th @ 12pm PST and emailed to animateducated@gmail.com. All films will be edited together and hopefully will appear on the upcoming 2026 Halloween Episode of Animateducated on YouTube.

Each Animator will be given screen credit, also please send me your contact info, website, etc so I can help promote your work.

If you have any questions, please contact animateducated@gmail.com

Editing in Animation

Unlike the live action Editor who has a variety of "takes" or footage that can be assembled to tell a story. Editing for Animation usually is planned out during the storyboard stage at the beginning of the production. Editors are still needed to assemble the scenes, help the pace of the film and to make sure the shots are all working together to tell the story visually. As an Animator, you need to understand how editing works and can help tell your story to your audience without boring them with too much information.

Director Alfred Hitchcock was a master of editing and help pioneer a lot of the editing techniques we see in films today. Here he is explaining how "Cutting" works, the process of going from one shot to the next to create a mood or to build tension for the audience.

Hitchcock looks like he wants to cut the interviewer in half with that last question.

This montage technique is also known as the Kuleshov Effect. Using a sequence of shots to create a mood or an emotional state in the mind of the viewer. The Moscow Film School (1919) was setup to train communist filmmakers to create newsreels for agitation and propaganda. The co-founder of the school, Lev Kuleshov pioneered film theory and came up with this cutting technique, shown below.

Audiences back then, felt they were watching the performance of a great actor, when in fact all the shots of the actor were the same shot. The other shots inbetween the actor's created this psychological effect. Today's audiences are not as sensitive towards this example. Below is a modern example of this technique with a faster pace to the cutting.

Here's a slower paced example with explanation.

 

Beginning animation students tend to use this formula when storyboarding an assignment where a character enters a room to find a mysterious box. They usually begin with an establishing shot, (Side view) with the character entering to see a box in the middle of the frame. We cut to the box (usually the character's POV). Next we are back to the wide establishing shot. At this point, we have pulled away from the box of interest. Instead of going to a close up of our character's reaction to see what the character thinks about what they are looking at, they cut away from the action. There is a lot of cutting from side view to front view to side to front which is also distracting visually and this doesn't help build the montage.

But what does an animation editor do?

Since most animation films are planned out in advanced, an animation editor will do a variety of tasks like cutting together the animatic,  

A Q/A with Production Designer, Aurelien Predal

Here is an interesting Q/A with Production Designer, Aurelien Predal who has worked on a lot of animated and live action films including, Inside Out 2, Project Hail Mary and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse. In this Q/A there are lots of clips, but no big spoilers and a lot about the production design process in general. 

I was happy to find out that the original artist of the Asterix comic book series was also colored blind, because I'm red/green colored blind. Aurelien mentions this and how he used some of these odd color choices in the series. Enjoy!