Our Animation Story

Currently in G.T. the whole class is working on their team's short animation film. Each team has a focus statement for their story, basically the title of their story. My team's focus statement is "Skippy Defeats Gum Monster". My team and I chose this focus statement because in the film the main characters are Wailana, Skippy, and the Gum Monster. In the story, gum gets stuck onto Wailana's hair and turns into this Gum Monster. But the only way to get rid of the Gum Monster is peanut butter. So Skippy comes in and they both go into this "battle". And well you know who wins.

The lesson that my team and I is trying to teach the audience is that when you take jealousy into action, it will never help you become a better person Also. peanut butter is a great way to take gum out of your hair. Once you get gum onto your hair, it's a whole sticky situation that you can't get out of alone. We teach this lesson of jealousy because jealousy can sometimes ruin friendships, which mostly everybody can relate to. We show in the video clearly that you can take gum out of hair by using peanut butter. 

Of course when working in a team not everything will go smoothly. We had our best moments but we also had our worst. Our worst moment was when we were behind and didn't meet the requirements for our rough cut. So everybody in the team had to stay in for second period and work on it and make up the extra work later on. But our best moment of all was that our team was the first ones to turn in our final short animation film. Which we got rewarded for by getting a bonus point for our grade. Overall, it was super great experience. I would absolutely love to make another animation film again!

After the whole class finished their short animation films, of course the class had to do a critique. We were critiquing each team on their characters/sets/props and creativity/originality/execution. As you can see my team received great critiques. After every team's animation film was viewed, everyone voted for their favorite film. And well, my team's short animation film won for the most votes on the Best Overall Animation! My teammates and I are very happy that we got the most votes. Hard work really does pay off!

Animation Outakes

The next project that we are working in G.T. is animation. The class I separated into eight teams. Each team would have to work together and create a short animation film, which will be submitted to a film festival. My teammates are Wailana Makepa and Mikela Griffen. Wailana Makep likes to hang out with friends and has experienced getting gum stuck onto her hair ;). Mikela Griffim likes to play soccer and enjoys making art. Wailana and Mikela are both wonderful and hard-working teammates and I'm very glad that we are a team. 

The technique that each team will be using in order to create this animation film is stop-motion. Stop-motion is the technique whereby the camera is repeatedly stopped and started. So you basically just take multiple pictures when every movement is changed.  A .GIF is an image file that consist of multiple images that are compressed together to reduce transfer time - pretty much a very short animation video. 

Each team's short animation film would have to be about a real life scenario that a teammate has overcomed. My team and I decided that we would make our animation film about Wailana and the story on how she got gum stuck onto her hair. What happened was Wailana's friend accidentally spit out gum onto her hair. Then the gum got stuck onto Wailana's hair. So she used peanut butter to take it out. But my team and I actually wanted to change the story a bit to make it more amusing to viewers. So we decided to make the gum, the Gum Monster. And the peanut butter as Skippy, the hero. You can see where this is going. Mikela is the main animator, Wailana is the voice of Skippy, and I'm the voice of the gum monster. I think you should care about our team's short film because if you ever get gum into your hair, peanut butter will surely help. Plus if you're ever in a bad mood, this short animation film will definitely put a smile on your face.