A Stop Motion Rotoscope Animation by Commonwealth Elementary 5th Grade Students at Inner-City Arts with Teaching Artists Joannza Lo and Ivan Lopez

A class of fifth graders utilized over 1,000 still frames to create this animated video. The animation–a collaborative effort–was produced by printing sliced footage of students dancing. Together, the classroom hand-painted and illustrated 30 stills each and scanned their finished frames back into digital format.

Inspired by Justin Bieber’s “Where Are You Now” music video, the process of creating this stop motion rotoscope animation engaged students in performance, digital, and analog art. What emerged from this labor-intensive, collaborative multimedia project is a fun animation piece that is spectacularly unique and ripe with personality.

If there is anything you watch today, let it be this.