Claymation Fun at Children's Creativity Museum

Yesterday Ava had the day off school so we decided to head into the city.

We met up with some friends and headed to the Children's Creativity Museum. As we arrived kind of late in the day (the girls had medical check ups and flu shots in the morning) we didn't have much time to explore the whole museum. Instead we headed straight to the Animation Studio and created our very own claymation movies.

Now, the girls and I visited Children's Creativity Museum during the Summer vacation last year but for some reason I never got around to writing a post about it. Last time we visited we created a claymation movie as well so this time around Ava thought herself quite the little expert! In fact, she actually did make her claymation character without any help and filmed the entire thing on her own too. Might have to send her down the road to work at Pixar!

Here's a look at our claymation fun...

Ava makes her claymation penguin.
Start with the "guts" and cover it with a coloured "skin". 

After rolling out the "skin" for her character Ava scrapes it off the table to use

Carefully applying a piece of "skin" to her penguin

Starting to look like a penguin

Characters done and ready to film

Ava repositions her characters for the next shot

Checking on the screen to make sure they look right

More adjustments between shots

Here's a look at Ava's completed movie "Pick up and drop"...

Lola and I also worked on a little movie. I made a blue bear as the main character and Lola made a, well... a blob of clay that she called a fountain! While Lola desperately wanted to help create the animation there wasn't really much that she could do on her own. I did notice after the movie was created though that she did manage to press the record button once - you'll see a shot of my hand adjusting the characters towards the end of the movie! 

Lola rolls more colour onto her fountain

Blue bear and the fountain ready for filming

Close up

Looks like the "fountain" came out the winner in this one!

Here's a look at "Blue Bear and the Fountain" in action...

While we're at it, let's take a look at the animation that we created on our last visit to Children's Creativity Museum. Ava and I made little penguins (do they look familiar?) and Lola made a little blob which we turned into a white duck. Our first claymation movie has pretty much the same plot as the two that we made today: character walking along, gets knocked over by something, gets up only to get knocked over again! Pretty original!

Ava and our penguins. Can you tell which one she made and which one I made?

Hanging out on the set

The cast

And here's our first movie "Penguins"...

We had so much fun making our claymation movies at Children's Creativity Museum. We'll definitely be back for more!