A girl
journeys through a vibrant, pulsing, macrocosmic landscape, but a precipitous
incident compels her to venture up a mountain in an attempt to save herself. A
story about illness, perseverance, and our connection to everything around us.
Animated on location at a
beach, in snow, and underwater, this stop-motion short details a transoceanic
conversation between two characters via objects in a bottle.
Animated Filmmaker Kirsten Lepore | KQED Arts 7:25
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
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 thispsychological 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 enteringto see abox 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,
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!
I finally have something to share with you, it's a documentary called "The Dreamers and I" which I made some animated sequences thru out. Kenji Yamamoto was a film and video editor and 10 years ago, he decided to make his own film after years of working on other people's films.
He got a grant to begin this project where he discovered am endless cast of characters living in a "Hacker House". The people from all over the world who were legal immigrants who were creating their own projects in hopes of selling their projects to big companies like Apple, Google and other big tech companies.
Don't take my word for it. Enjoy this interview instead...
Here's another interview where you can hear Kenji explaining how this film came about.
I started the project when it was called, "The Big Deal" and early on, Kenji had discovered that he was basically camera shy and wanted an animated version of himself talking to the viewer instead of himself.
I started working on making the animated Kenji designs first and allowing Kenji to direct the character design process. This all began in 2024 and it was a slow process not on a tight deadline. I am currently editing down an interview with Kenji and his wife Nancy, who is also has a lot of films under her belt as well.
For now, enjoy this trailer from the film and you will see the animated Kenji towards the end.
"The Dreamers and I" will begin streaming on PBS beginning August 1st and I will post a schedule if you are interested in seeing the whole film for free!
And then Sir David Attenborough turns 100 years old. What can we do to say Happy 100th Birthday?
Make an animated Birthday Card.
HOW? Can you animate 9 drawings if I sent you an Animal image A and you morphed it into Animal image B? Could you send it back to me as a movie file before May 6th?
Here's am anijam I organised back in 2015 BC (Before Covid). Each change is 36 drawings or 3 seconds of screen time. The animation you will do will move a lot quicker.
I have no idea of where to send the fianl animation, but I think if we make it and everyone posts it to their social media, I'm hoping he might see it, And if not, other people might and wonder who is David Attenborough?
If this is something you want to do, send me an email at animateducated@gmail.com
I just saw Ocean, a film of hope and probably the last film he will be in, but maybe not...
Jack Plotnick is an actor who began making short videos when he wasn't acting. During Covid, he began a long term project where he began playing the background parts in several Disney TV documentaries from the late1950s. "The Wonderful World of Color" was a series of television programs which appeared nationwide on TV sets all over America every Sunday night. Occasionally, Walt Disney would take you behind the scenes to show the making of his new amusement park, Disneyland!
Fast forward to the beginning of Covid, Jack Plotnick comforts himself in old Disney episodes until one day, using only i-Movie, a tripod and a green screen, he created a 45 minute video beginning with artist Mary Blair, who is tired of working on Disney artwork and soon discovers a sinister plot about the real creation DisneyWorld!
Here is a recent interview about Jack's previous projects and how he combine his short Disney videos into "Disney made a House of the Future: The Movie"
If you enjoyed this interview, please leave a comment on the video or a like. Subscribe to see future videos or if would like to support my YouTube channel, please donate to my ko-fi.
Hey Everybody, It is a new year for animation. KPop Demon Hunters swept the Annie Awards and the Oscars are next. I have a few interview leads which I am work on for future interviews for you to enjoy and learn something from.
Here are some reason episodes you might have missed...
I have started a new series comparing the animatic storyboards to the final animation. Below is Tex Avery's final cartoon where I combine the storyboards frames with the final cartoon.
If you like what you see on my Animateducated YouTube channel you can now!
Most people never see the storyboards from an animated film. The boards are created to show how the story fits together and are the blueprints to the final film. I recently came across these storyboard thumbnail drawings fromTex Avery, who rough out some of the gags in his animated cartoon called "Shhhhh" from 1955.
The film is about a nervous little man who is told by his doctor that he needs to live a quiet lifstyle or he may explode. Of course, this is the set up of many gags where he is trying to avoid loud noises and situations.
Here are the first two rough storyboards of the film. See if you can understand what is happening, then take a look at the video below.
In the video below, the thumbnail drawings on the left and the final cartoon on the right to show how the rough ideas became final poses in the completed cartoon.
As you can see not all the gags were in these thumbnail storyboards. I hope to post more storyboard/final film comparisons in the near future. Let me know if you enjoyed this video and want to see more.
I'll keep it short, In 2025 the world changed again and if you missed a few Animateducated episodes, here is a quick recap. Enjoy.
I will be teaching 3 classes every Monday and Wednesday beginning 2026, which means I have a lot of extra days to make new episodes or pehaps finally work on that film idea which has been haunting me for 27 years. Will I finally take this idea and craft it into a short film and finally get it out of my head for good?
Every semester is 15 to 16 weeks in length and last week was the end of the Fall 2025 semester at CSUF. I have been teaching the ART353B Animation Production class since 2019. Some classes are easier than others and I always learn something new while teaching these classes.
In the previous class of ART 353A Animation Pre-Production, students learn about storytelling, a little bit about character design, storyboarding and creating a final animatic of a short 1 to 2 minute film. Some students create longer ideas, but in my class I know how long it takes to make a film. I work with the student to find a way to keep the film shorter.
At the beginning of the 353B class, I want to see their final animatic from 353A. I am always amazed and frustrated when the animatic is not complete, the story is confusing or it is too damn long. Sometimes I get all three in one project.
A lot of these projects were finished in other Animation Pre-Production classes and it is now my job to help the student get there animatics finished up so they can start to begin the production process as soon as possible. This can be either a week or more before they can start to breakdown their animatic into Harmony files.
I teach Harmony because it is an industry standard and I want my student to have work experience using so they can apply to an animation studio that uses it. Clip Paint Studio, Procreate and other software can be used, but might not get you a job at Disney or any other studio. But that's another story...
Before we go further, the film below started as a simple animatic which was a little confusing and is about a very unique subject. How the sound of the words in this sentence spoken in Japanese all sounded almost the same.
Angie Ferrater came up with this project set in a classroom to tell her unique story. Here is the final results below.
Angie succeeded in making her final film during a really rough semester and after accidently dropping her laptop several weeks before the final. She was able to re-animate her missing scenes and get the film finished for the final presentation.
Always have a Plan B
A storyboard and animatic may go through many changes before the story is told is a form that works for an audience to understand and enjoy. Students might discover while working on their scenes that either they have a lot of work to do or discover a way to shorten their story to in order to have less scenes to do.
It is ok to revise your animatic to add or remove scenes during production. The animatic is the blueprint of a house, you can remove that extra bedroom or put a pool in the backyard. In making a film, sometimes it takes making another edit of your animatic to test out your theory. By editing a shorter version of your animatic and seeing what works better, will save you time and work, but still keep the story moving along.
Stay on Target, Almost There
The saddest thing I see is when a student has a really good film in the works and by the end of the semester, they show the film "almost finished" but they never touch it again after the class ends. They get their grade for the class and that's it.
We now have an end of the semester screening to showcase finished student work. I encourage my students to work towards getting their films into this screening if they can or watch the films that got into the screening.
There is something that no class can teach you when you have finished your film which took a year or less to complete and you watch it with an audience. When people react to what you planned out and worked on for many weeks or months, All the self doubt and long hours suddenly will pay off. You made a film and people are reacting to it how you hope they would. You also have a film which you can enter in a film festival if you like and other people will see it too.
In fact, someone might even contact you later after seeing your film, it is possible.
Here are two more students who created trailers or previews of their final film which they are planning to complete in the Spring of 2026. Both Ruben and Brady have animation and storytelling skills in the making of their films. Enjoy!
The Barber and the Beast by Ruben Perez
It Came to Port Gamble by Brady Grassi
As I stated at the beginning of all my classes, making a finished film is not easy and takes a lot of personal concentration, imagination and time. It's a learning process that takes a lot of effort to get to the finish line.
And it is hard to do if you have 4, 5 or more studio classes, have a part time or full time job or have family responsiblities as well. If you can juggle those things successfully while making a film and finishing it, you will have successed what you started.
I wish Angie, Brady and Ruben success in the future and can't wait to see what they come up with next.
