Announcing the winners of The Animation Challenge

We recently ran The Animation Challenge, a fantastic filmmaking competition open to all young people aged 5 to 19 across the UK, asking them to create a simple stop motion animation entitled 'A Day in the Life of…'. After receiving dozens of entries, we're delighted to announce our two winners...

Huge congratulations to Edgewick Community Primary School for their film A Day in the Life of... A Sock! in the 12 and under category, and Cecily and Rose from Plymouth College of Art, for their film, A Day in the Life of... the Boy who Plants Trees in the 13 and over category! Both groups of winning filmmakers will be awarded with certificates and £250 worth of equipment to help them continue producing brilliant animations.

A Day in the Life of... A Sock!

Stuart the sock was bored living on a smelly foot, so went on an adventure by himself, finding a friend and a new place to hang out.

A Day in the Life of... A Sock! was made by six young people aged between 8-11 from Edgewick Community Primary School, Coventry. We spoke to the animation challenge winners about making their film. 

"It was exciting to create this animation. We started planning out what we wanted to do and which household item we would use. Once we decided on a sock, we came up with a storyboard of what would happen. We thought about the characters, using narration and decided who would speak on the film. Our teacher helped us mostly with positioning the camera and with the final editing. It was so much fun and we're pleased with the final film."

Going further, the young filmmakers continued to talk about their filmmaking experience. "My teacher told me about the club and I wanted to join so that I could put stories to my drawings", said Richa. "We all liked the idea of creating an animation for the competition", said Hajer. "Winning made me so happy because I thought there would be better animators." They were also keen to offer advice to other young filmmakers: "Don't think it's too hard because anyone can do it", offered Saara. "Less is more."

A Day in the Life of... The Boy who Plants Trees

The Earth gets louder and dirtier and messier everyday, with litter covering its' surface. Meanwhile, no-one appears to notice except a young boy who travels everyday with his whale friend to plant a tree.

A Day in the Life of... the Boy who Plants Trees was made by two young filmmakers, aged 17-19, from Plymouth College of Art on the South coast of England. One of the pair, Cecily, spoke to us about making their winning film.

"A week before the competition deadline, myself and my classmate Rose were told about the competition by our teacher. With the deadline so soon we were a little uncertain, but we decided to give it our best shot. We planned and shot the video in one day, and edited it the following day. Making the film was a struggle, and certainly tested our patience, but we loved making it together. We both contributed to every task in the process, and I think that is what made it much easier."

"Our inspiration for this animation in particular came from a close friend of Rose's who founded treebytree.org - a charity and social movement promoting reforestation. We wanted to portray Tree by Tree's effort to create small but important differences to our environment."

"This character in our animation is inspired by the determination and patience of my friends at Tree by Tree," said Rose. "When the character is confronted by a messy and noisy earth he finds a quiet spot and starts to clean up the mess we have made. Though his actions are small, he lives every day making little differences. I hope that the little differences become something big as the inspiration for this project may inspire others who see it."