Mentor Campers Make Magic -- One Frame At A Time

Ryan Kilkenny, Chase Adler and Thor Kazmaier have been working on their film all week.

It opens with a fairly straight-forward robbery and chase sequence, except its portrayed by Lego Star Wars characters and set to the music of a Dutch metal band.

Then an enormous Play-Doh worm comes by and eats everything.

The film is about 67 seconds long, has no dialogue and -- not to belabor the point -- took five days of painstaking labor to create.

But that's actually a pretty quick turnaround in the world of stop-motion animation where masterpieces and silly romps are created one frame at a time.

Ryan, Chase, Thor, Amber Clifton and brothers Jacob and Nicholas Schwalm know a lot more about that world now that they've participated in Mentor Recreation's stop-motion camp.

They had to rebuild the red worm three times

It takes a lot of patience to portray anything in stop-motion animation.

You pose one frame, take a photo and then move the figures ever so slightly to demonstrate motion before taking another photo. Then you piece all of your photos together -- sort of like a flipbook.

Anywhere from 10 to 20 frames make a single second's worth of film.

Repeat this process until your masterpiece is complete.

"It takes a long time and a lot of patience," Amber said.

"It was a lot of fun but it could be difficult when things fell apart," Nicholas added.

(This was a common comment. For example, Ryan, Chase and Thor had to rebuild the aforementioned Play-Doh worm three times during filming.)

Nevertheless, the kids all agreed they had fun learning and flexing their creativity.

"We made a movie about aliens eating each other," Nicholas said. "I mean, that's cool."

Stop motion, Lego robots and roller coasters

Funutation Tekademy runs the camp. They also hosts camps in Mentor that teach kids how to make iPhone apps, build Lego robots, design roller coasters and more.

Counselor Sean Seymour concluded the camp by screening the kids' films for their parents.

"This is a really good group of kids," he noted. "They worked together well."

The kids still smile and laugh as they watch their aliens eat each other or when the worm begins to wreak havoc. ("It took awhile to make the aliens' mouths get bigger so it looked like they were each other," Nicholas said.)

But even in the credits, there is an indication of all the hard work.

When listing the characters, next to the red worm, it reads, "I rebuilt your three times."

Check out the Mentor Parks & Recreation web site for more camps going on this summer.