Lets Animate Showreel from Gemma Amos on Vimeo.

With the help of UK-based creative iStopMotion animation workshop Let’s Animate, your show is always about to begin. Let’s Animate offers a number of tailored iStopMotion courses to a variety of community groups, and the party is endless. The workshops cater to school field trips, teacher training, club activities, promotional material, team building events and even taster sessions, where new animators can get a taste of the craft before choosing the right workshop for them. No matter the situation, Gemma Amos, founder of Let’s Animate, will find the perfect approach for everyone.

Gem had an interest in animation from a young age, and when she first saw Aardman’s Wallace and Gromit, she began modeling and crafting her own characters and sets. She went on to study animation at a university and graduated with first class honors. From there, she landed a job at Ragdoll Productions, the creators of Teletubbies and In The Night Garden. While she worked at Ragdoll, she began facilitating animation workshops on the side. The more animation workshops she took on, the more she realized that it was her dream career. Eventually, she left Ragdoll to start her own animation workshop company, and Let’s Animate was born.

From the beginning, Gem used iStopMotion in all of her workshops. She loves the remote camera app and often uses it to work with multiple cameras at the same time.

“In my eyes, iStopMotion is the best on the market,” she says. “The layout is extremely user-friendly and simple in design, allowing anyone to use it. We film on iPads for the workshops and it is extremely simple – just a few clicks and the animation starts to take shape. iStopMotion is definitely a market leader for everyone to use.”

Gem loves facilitating all of her workshops because they are so different from each other – she never knows what the group will be like or what fantastic stories they will create. She says that their creative energy actually inspires her own work, as well. The workshops last anywhere from three hours on depending on the type of class. For example, Let’s Animate facilitates iStopMotion birthday parties for around three hours with a half hour added in for food and party fun. Gem recommends that young animators be 7+ and that parties have a maximum of ten participants, but everything else is fair game. Many parties are based on a theme if requested – Gem has worked with children on animations based on Minecraft, Disney’s Frozen and LEGO.

The iStopMotion animation process is always one of the best parts. Let’s Animate focuses on five steps: designing and scripting a storyboard, building models and sets, animating, editing and recording sounds. It helps animators to work together to create something that each person has a special part in.

“Using iStopMotion enhances the learning experience because it’s simple to use, it gets people using modern technology like iPads, it brings communities together through animation and it helps develop creativity and imagination,” Gem says. “The whole experience is fun, energetic and easy to replicate at home.”

One of Gem’s favorite student animations is called “Pester Power.” It is a collection of stories created for the Warwickshire police force to use in primary schools. It teaches students about the many areas of danger, including social media awareness, robbery, bullying, stranger danger and more. The animations were created by a class of secondary school students to help teach the primary school children. It was one of Gem’s larger productions, lasting around ten weeks from start to finish. She is incredibly proud of her students’ work, and she is always eager to share the story behind the animation.

“Parents are always asking about the software,” she says. “I have tried and tested many programs but I have always stuck with iStopMotion.”

To check out more videos from Let’s Animate workshops, please visit https://vimeo.com/channels/letsanimate. All of the films were created with iStopMotion!

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