The Media Arts Club of SUNY Fredonia has been making weekly visits to the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Chautauqua County since October 2009 to help a group of kids create their own Claymation shorts. Their films will be screened at the second annual SUNYWide Film Festival.
Eleven children from the Boys and Girls Club, ranging from ages six through 11, have been participating in the project.
The kids have broken up into groups to create their own characters and plots for their short films. Members of the Media Arts Club are working with the kids to form their characters out of clay and help film the still frames that will eventually be put together to produce the short animations.
Joe Lopez III, president of the Media Arts Club, founded this new project as a way to give the kids experience in a different kind of art form. Lopez said the Media Arts Club plans to continue this project every year.
Producing a Claymation is a fairly labor-intensive process that involves two steps: moving a clay figure in a small amount and then taking a picture of the figure. This process is repeated until all of the pictures needed to form a video have been taken. Members of the Media Arts Club will help shoot the clay figures, while the kids will help by moving their figures.
“For one second in a Claymation you will have already taken 12 to 15 pictures,” explained Lopez. “It is a very tedious process and the kids have been wonderfully patient.”
The Media Arts Club will invite the children and their families to the SUNYWide Film Festival to screen the eight Claymation shorts currently in production.
The second annual SUNYWide Film Festival will take place April 15 to 17 and will feature films in the categories of animation, documentary, experimental, and narrative. All of the films screened at the festival will be produced by students and alumni of the SUNY System.
For more information about the Claymation project or Media Arts Club, contact Joe Lopez III at lope1286@fredonia.edu.
