Puppet Making for Stop Motion

Last month, I lived one of the most intensive and charming weeks of my life. I had the chance to give a workshop in Puppet making for animation where i met nine of the most inspiring artists from Lebanon and the arab world. It all happened within Beirut Animated Festival, in its second edition, organized by Cinema Metropolis and Samandal Magazine.

The participants had different backgrounds; printmaking, illustration, 2D and 3D animation, music, cinema ... and this mixture gave a great potential to start the workshop with.

The schedule of the workshop was so challenging; we had to finish 9 puppets with all their accessories, decide on a story, do the storyboard and move to the animation part, editing and music.

How to do all these tasks in one week with participants who are not all familiar with puppet making and stop motion animation ?

Above these limitations, something unexpected happened; a great group energy multiplied our efforts. We used to work till 5 am in the morning, take shifts sometimes, reschedule everything for one reason; we love what we do. We kept enjoying our time till the last minute of the workshop and we finished the movie just before the screening schedule of the festival.

The movie was short but with great potential and a lot of love.

I learned a lot from this workshop. Now i really believe that everything is possible when you meet the right people.

Thanks everyone for believing in this project and i hope we ll have the chance one more time to rock ...

Please watch the Short movie we did and the workshop process.

Workshop Moderator: David Habchy
Assistants : Ashley Choukeir, Nadim Saoma.
Participants:
Lama Sawaya
Nour Bishouty
Ahmad Beiruty
Avak Avakian
Elie Maatouk
Salam Al Hassan
Nadia Rais
Ghalia Al Barghouthi
Mohamed Fathi

The workshop took place in two amazing animation studios in Lebanon; La Palma & Kurio motion studios.

Thanks to Sarah Maali and Joelle Kiame for their great help :)

Thanks to AFAC for funding this workshop.