Experimental Animation Workshop - Finelines Illustration and Animation Festival May 2025

Photograph by Leon Keys @leon.keys.photographer

I ran an experimental animation workshop at Finelines Festival for an embodied participation experience. Visitors at the festival of various ages, backgrounds and abilities came and immersed themselves in music played by DJ Suga, and explored experimental animation techniques, live projections and doodled loops with paint pens.

The paper strips I made for people to doodle on are inspired by the technique “draw on film” abstract animations on 16mm film, but here each strip equals 1 second of animation at 12 frames per second.

I made a stop frame rig using a kids Dinos card box, with a 3 x 2cm window so strips could be inserted and each frame photographed with a phone and a free stop motion app called Onioncam2.

The workshop sessions resulted in the collective creation of an experimental animated film that was screened at Finelines Festival on the same day.

SARAH FOX