Name: Cartooning & Stop Motion Animation With Alex Shapiro (Ages 13-18)
Start: 2025-09-20T12:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-12-13T13:00:00-04:00
Location: Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL)

Cartooning & Stop Motion Animation With Alex Shapiro (Ages 13-18)

Turn your drawings into dynamic stories and characters that leap off the page!
About this Event

Fall Semester Classes Schedule: September 20th - December 13th

Teaching Artist Alex Shapiro

Cartooning & Stop Motion Animation (13-18)| $369

Saturday Ages: 13 -18, 12pm - 1pm

Turn your drawings into dynamic stories and characters that leap off the page! This engaging and creative class invites young artists to explore the exciting worlds of cartooning and animation while building a personal portfolio or stop-motion animation project they can proudly share.

Students will dive into the art of visual storytelling by creating original characters, comic book creation, and illustrations. Whether you're designing a manga hero, a hilarious comic strip, this class will help you sharpen your skills and bring your artistic ideas to life!

Learning Objectives:

Originality: Learn the difference between creating original art and writing and copying or interpreting another person’s work.
Types of Comics and Stop-motion Animation: Explore the differences between traditional hand drawn animation, cut paper animation, Claymation and object animation, and white board animation.
Character Design for Comics and Animation: Design original characters and how different facial expressions and body movements convey emotions, intentions, personality, and action.
Backgrounds and Perspective for Comics and Animation: Create settings that convey location, conditions, and mood of the story.
Lettering for Comics and Animation: Explore effective, appropriate and aesthetically interesting lettering for communication for comic books and animation titles.
Layout and Design for Comics and Animation: Master various techniques of layout and graphic design for comic books, and set, title, and transition design for animation.
Animation techniques: Students will have the option to instead choose a specific type of stop-motion animation and then learn the technical aspects and “how to’s” of that particular animation which they will then use to make their own animated video.
Storytelling/Sequential Art for comics and animation storyboarding: Tell a story using sequential art techniques that combine drawing and text together for effective communication.
Portfolio Creation: Assemble a portfolio for professional presentation of your work for the purposes of personal artistic growth and record, as well as for use in application to arts programs and schools.

Join us for a fun, inspiring journey where your imagination takes center stage—perfect for aspiring artists, storytellers, and future animators!

Meet The Artist: Alexander Shapiro is a professional cartoonist and illustrator whose work has appeared in various publications and websites, and whose clients have included CBS-TV, The San Francisco Chronical, The Central Park Conservancy, and the Department of Environmental Protection. He has taught cartooning, graphic memoir, illustration, animation for teaching clients have included The Museum of the City of New York, The Queens Museum, The California College of the Arts, Marymount Manhattan College, and The DYCD Heroes Project as well as as a resident artist in the New York City public school system.