A fish with a smile

Watch and enjoy. Use this animated story as inspiration for your own story, poem, animation, song, discussion. How many themes can you discover?

Found here. This animation was inspired by a picture book by the famous Taiwanese author and illustrator Jimmy Liao. The short won first prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007.

 

Vovo (Portuguese for grandfather)

Watch Vovo, a short film by 25 year old award winning director and animator, Luiz Lafayette Stockler.

This is a short, simple but powerful story. How does the animation enhance the spoken text? What makes the simple pictures bring the story to life? Do they offer additional information which is not contained in the text? Comment on the perspective of the pictures, eg the focus on Vovo’s feet when he’s opening the fridge.

Write a short story about someone who matters to you. Create a storyboard either on paper or  online. Think carefully about your pictures and make them sparse. Play around with your perspective.

You can read an interview with Luiz Stockler here. Here is his website.

 

Writing prompt #2 – Are you ready to play Five Card Flickr?

Photo by Serenae on Flickr

Are you ready to play Five Card Flickr?

It’s a quick and fun way to write a story using Flickr-generated images. In fact, you can write it right there on the website.

It’s simple –

Firstly, you choose one out of five images randomly selected for you, then you get a new set of five from which you choose another image – and so it goes until you have 5 images which form the prompts for your story.

Once you have your 5 images, you enter your title, your username and write the story itself. Then, after you prove you’re not a robot by typing in the CAPTCHA, you save the story and it’s shared with others. You’re famous.

You can use the pictures in any order. Try to choose images which give you a location to set the scene, character or characters you can develop, and leave a picture which you think will inspire an ending (logical, surprising, shocking, hilarious…)

There are different ways you can write your story –

• rhyming poem
• unrhyming poem
• prose
• short play
• song
• in any language

Don’t forget to grab the photo credits at the bottom of the page. If people share stuff with you, you should always credit them – it’s good manners.

Have a go!

I’ve tried this activity in class, so if you want to read about the experience, click here.