The ENDELESS PRESENT | LIMITED FUTURE Animation Camp will take place between 11-16 July 2022. The participants will make a short animated film using the stop motion technique, based on the topic developed within the comics and creative writing workshops: fighting plastic pollution and #zeroplastic. The stop motion workshops will be coordinated by Radu Igaszag, Professor and Head of the Animation department in the Romanian National University of Theatre and Film and Vedat Sevincer from Norsensus Mediaforum, our project partner.

The animation camp brings together 13 children and teenagers from the towns of Slobozia, Turnu Măgurele, Oltenița, Mizil, Alexandria and Urziceni, namely the authors of the best two works in each of the six communities, made as a result of the comics and creative writing workshops organized between September 25, 2021 and April 10, 2022.

The jury, formed by the six workshop trainers – Ana Agopian, Anna Florea, Alin Ivan, Aneli Munteanu, Iulia Rugină, Oana Răsuceanu – made the selection out of all the works submitted by participants, considering the following criteria:

1. The Story – 0 to 5 points – It is the most important element of a comic strip; the story is the base of the script and must contain the main idea and the character/characters; it’s also the one that shows the sequence of movement, as the author imagined it; a consistent story with a clear narrative is fundamental to decide how the comic will be cut into the strip sequence.

2. The mise-en-scène – 0 to 5 points – also called a storyboard; it follows the sequentiality of the scenes that compose the comics’ action; important elements to be considered are different camera angles, action flow, scene duration, characters’ appearance in strips, director’s treatment, text editing and bubbles arrangement, creating the atmosphere, transmitting tension or characters’ moods through strip dynamic.

3. Drawing – 0 to 5 points – image clarity and generated effect by means of style; drawings give us information, just like a story, creating a single organism, which is why we cannot talk about comics without these two elements; depending on how the story is approached, drawings can have little or big impact upon the reader and sometimes help us understand the story without having to read the dialogues; expressive strokes, recognizable characters, recurrent settings and elements, all of these are part of the work of a comics drawer and story-teller.

4. Topic – 0 to 5 points – understanding and transmitting through their own story, in comics, the topic of our workshop: “Sustainable development – Fighting plastic pollution”.

5. Originality – 0 to 5 points – we can talk about originality at story level in the comics made by our trainees as long as they don’t copycat their sources of inspiration; this is a very important aspect showing the story-teller’s craft and artistic touch; building adequately on the information or the style used for inspiration will lead to beautiful admirable creations: this criterion will take into consideration all the aspects a comic implies (story, drawing, strip sequence, topic, characters, style etc.).

Thus, the jury selected the following winning works:

– from Slobozia: DANDYLION vs POLLUTION and Paranoid Nicolae ;

– from Mizil: JENKI AND LUNĂR and TRICKS AND SUN ;

– from Oltenița : SUPERHUMAN and DECISIONS ;

– from Alexandria : THE HERO and ACCIDENTALLY – CIUCUREL’S ADVENTURES

– from Urziceni : PEONY’S ADVENTURE and ISAAC’S ADVENTURE

– from Turnu Măgurele : ECOGIRL and THE PLASTIC FACTORY.

 

You can find all the submitted works from each participating town in our website « Stories » section.

More news will follow on the workshops and the works made by children during the Animation Camp.