JCOS Animation Workshop

I was at the Jefferson County Open School this Spring to teach another animation workshop!

Possibly the best public school in the world. On entering the building each afternoon I was fed by the pervasive enthusiasm of every learner in the building. This is a community built on self-directed, whole child, experiential education.

My love affair with this community did not start here. I’ve had an “in” for 10 years chaperoning trips like “The Art and Culture of L.A.” and “The Independent Film Trip” to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. But working in the building was a small dream of mine and it came true this March.

This fantastic group of students took their turn at the challenge of making a metamorphic exquisite corpse animation as a group on index cards and they drew almost 800 drawings in their spare time!

With the theme of “Hybrid Creatures” they each designed a hybridized character, like a “Pica-yogurt” (Picachu + yogurt) and a “Squain” (squid + brain) and spent their spare time drawing in-betweens on index cards to transform each creature into the next in an endless loop. This particular loop has some gaps, but those who finished get credit for being the most engaging young animators I’ve ever worked with.