RE: ANIMATION @ The NFB

Wapos Bay: All's Fair (clip 1), directed and written by Melanie Jackson, was a claymation made in 2007. Wapos bay is actually a series of episodes made by Jackson, which follows the adventures of three children from a Cree community (Native Indian) in Saskatchewan. The genre for this type of animation is adventure and life, it targets everyone especially kids. In this particular clip, the Winter Games are underway in Wapos Bay and the community have invited NHL player Jordin Tootoo to be part of their community's role model program.

I found this animation to be amazing because of all the detail they put into making the claymation. I've done claymation at school and I can surely say that it's very difficult to make the animation flow and move cleanly. What they did was simply amazing and I was also blown away by how they shaped and made their characters. It truly is a type of art and it's a type that surely isn't easy to make. Although it was only a minute and a half, I can't image how long it would of took them to make it. It takes already about 720 frames to make a 30 second animation using stop motion and this was already a around a minute and a half and that's over 1000 frames! Unbelievable! This is only a clip, I searched around more episodes of Wapos Bay by Melanie Jackson and she had episodes with a length of about 20 minutes! That must of definitely taken quite some time. I really appreciate her work, and by doing claymation myself I appreciate it not only in a viewers perspective by also as a producers perspective, in making the claymation. She did a great job and its amazing to see how much you can do with just a lump of clay!