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St Ambrose High - New film ideas

Great first ideas from St Ambrose High pupils. The story goes that some scientist is making a mad machine to produce lots of food. It goes wrong and spurts out magical food which hits different people and gives them the power of that food!! 

Crazy spaghetti limbs......sprouty fart powers.....power to grow plants from seeds! Cant wait to see it develop, well done group .

St Ambrose High - Artwork and story

St Ambrose have the record for 'most places visited in one short cartoon' ! Big question is "Where's the main character!!!??"  Haven't seen him yet. 

Braidhurst High excel in character design

Amazing and detailed 2D characters made by 3XL at Braidhurst. Front and back views of the puppets are spot on! Cant wait to see them animating. Olaf will be proud! 

XL - Cumbernauld Academy - Initial film ideas

Squished up a few of the ideas from the class into one film. OK, so its basically a cook off programme hosted by Ainsley Harriot (famous celebrity chef) but the contenders are fantasy characters and action heroes! 

So far we have Shrek, a ninja, a knight and a dragon. Other possibles include Peter Pan, Rapunzel and a dog! Ainsley will introduce the new cooks who will each try to cook a special dish. 

Animation Jam's Tips

  • Keep each character's little bit of animation simple. 
  • Could make the dish they're cooking sort of related to them (like a dog could make bone pie)
  • Keep the special way they cook also related to themselves. You mentioned that the dragon would cook food with fire. Sounds great. 
  • A small group can make all the bits for one characters cooking session. They could have a part of the kitchen each (so each make a new kitchen backdrop) 
  • Characters could travel out of the kitchen (to get an ingredient) This must be brief and not be a massive story itself! 
  • I want to see rough plans written down....email them to Animation Jam

XL - St Ambrose - First ideas

Sporting theme coming from this class. Only had 1 session so far but the ideas were coming thick and fast! Will update soon but as far as I can remember there's a football match taking place when one of the players runs off the pitch and goes on a mad sport adventure. They just keep running and running, over land and seas, doing other sports on the way. Javelin may be involved, but that might be too dangerous! (hee hee) 

Remember 3XL, come up with a good ending for the film. Was he/she going to come back to the football pitch and finish the game? Was there a half time? Were oranges involved and how annoyed are all the other players cos of their long wait? 

Keep us informed....send pictures, cant wait!

JIM - AJ

XL Teachers learning how to animate!!

Yes....even teachers have to learn something sometimes. Jim's survived teaching 5 teachers (Art and Tech teachers too) at Cumbernauld Academy. Part of Princes Trust's brilliant 'Arts and Employability' program. 

XL St Maurice's - Artwork and ideas

The 3 film ideas from the class are coming along well. Here's the story development from the groups.

The "catronaut" story is coming along with work developing on creating characters and props as you may have seen from the pictures.

The "Mickey Mouse" story involves a wedding between Mickey and Minnie which is halted due to an objection from a Family Guy character (?!). 

The third story is the one where the boys have developed the person falling from the plane scenario and a "dead cat" bounce as the falling man squashes some unfortunate passer by.

XL St Maurice's - The stories begin

St Maurice's high school have started planning their films now so keep coming back to see how its developing. At the moment there are 3 short films in production and the groups are still developing their ideas. Bus some sketches of characters are coming along nicely. 

Rough ideas so far.....

  1. A planes engine blows out causing the plane to fall. The passengers start floating about and vomitting all over the place! The largest man on board gets sucked out of the door and falls to earth!! Not sure what happens next but it might involve bouncing!
  2. Space cats (catstronauts?) land their rocket on Mars. Theirs something there they want and they will take it at any cost! It might be milk or fishy related as it starts to rain milk at some point in the story (can't wait to see this) Only proble is the planet is not empty! Its inhabited by weird alien mice cratures who are pretty angry! Needless to say, there will be a battle!
  3. Not sure of the story yet, but a third film uses Micky and minnie Mouse in a brand new adventure. 

Keep expanding these stories groups....we need scenes and backgrounds and lots of clever ways to win any battles. think of what that kind of creature would want or like and make jokes out of it! have fun.
Jim

Braidhurst animation update

We've had an update from the 3XL class at Braidhurst High. One pupil emailed Animation Jam with this. 

“Hi Jim,
We are busy drawing our characters for our film. We are trying them on paper before we draw them on card. This way we can see what they look like on our backgrounds. please find attached photographs ”
— Lauren G

Braidhurst High - First storyboards

Here we go!! Definitely a smashing film coming along!

Braidhurst High - Initial ideas

WOW! Already had a great draft of an idea from the class at Braidhurst High. Here it is:

The kids are working on an idea where the teacher of an unruly class turns into the Hulk causing the kids to run into a cupboard only to appear in Narnia where they are confronted by Olaf the snowman (from Frozen) whom they kill. The teacher then wakes up and realises it was all a dream.

Can't wait to start seeing artwork......storyboards are already started. 

Jim

XL starting up again

Well, its January again and the only thing that gets me through the winter days is seeing the school groups in North Lanarkshire developing funky ideas for cartoons. Animation Jam work with the XL Groups within the high schools each year as part of the Princes Trust's 'Arts and Employability' program. We teach them how to make their own animated film and, with the support of their teachers, they finish it for an early April deadline.

I hope to post some of their ideas as they develop here.