Just finished a very enjoyable and successful weekend at Dorothy Clive Garden’s Insect Event. The weather was kind to us and we had a very busy weekend. Lots of families turned up to pond dip and see insects and other minibeasts in all of their forms in an annual event at the garden. This year we joined them and soon had lots of children making models of the insects that they had seen and bringing them to life using stop motion animation.
I always enjoy these events as you see such variation in each child’s approach and such determination for them to create their vision and I love the way parents get involved too! I am on a promise to ensure that one lad’s hoverfly will definitely be visiting a flower when I edit the greenscreen footage and another young boy has written an epic story about a Ghost Ant with a stone ant army which I have yet to consider how to produce.
As always, the children’s previous experience with animation was varied, but for most it was their first (but I hope not their last). One young lad found out (if you pardon the expression) that ‘size matters’ and a couple of girls soon got their friends/families organised into competitive teams!
It was great to get such a positive response from everyone and I hope our paths will cross again. I now have thousands of frames to process and bring together into an animation so it could take a while but we will get there! Watch this space.
BTW: At the end of the day I came home, tired but excited only to face yet another insect…this one on my barbecue!
