The MAKING ANIMATED FILMS workshop with award-winning animator Dustin Grella guides students through the processes of creating individual and group animated films. Students commence with the basic storytelling techniques used in traditional frame-by-frame ("cel") animation, and are then empowered by learning a panoply of techniques for conceptual planning, design, drawing, storyboarding, and editing. Dusty encourages students to explore their personal stories and helps them realize their objectives by teaching them new modes of self-expression. MAKING ANIMATED FILMS demystifies the processes of filmmaking with screenings and discussion of specific features of significant films in animation history. After a variety of exercises, each student makes one animated film to keep and share.

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Dustin Grella is an animator and documentary filmmaker whose work attempts to glean glimpses of colorful insight into the seemingly mundane. His work has screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and won the Walt Disney Award at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. His film Prayers for Peace screened at almost two hundred festivals worldwide and won over forty awards. Dustin, the newest member of the SEQ ART KIDS teaching corps, has an empathetic and non-daunting style of helping elementary school children create their own animations.

Learn more at Dusty's website.