I had the pleasure of working Friday the 15th and Saturday the 16th of February in Northern Ireland with our friends at BBC Blast Northern Ireland in Belfast working with NIDYA (Northern Ireland Deaf Youth Association) to create a film about a monkey escaping from the zoo.
My role was to work with the mixed group of teenagers to film the animation section of the film. Working through interpretors we had a great two days animating in a television studio.

The young people involved in the project lived locally, some were deaf. Filming also took part at Belfast Zoo, and the team were challenged to integrate real filming with cuts to animation.

We used a Sony Z1 camera linked up to an Apple computer running the brilliant iStopMotion.

The young people involved in the project demonstrated clear animation talent with lots of ideas and ways of overcoming challenges with the story and continuity. The final animation sequences were quite simply brilliant, well done gang. Big thanks to Sue Barry and her team from NIDYA and also to Emma, Emma and John from Blast.
I’ll link here the completed film when the BBC have finished putting together the final edit.

Some images from the event: