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JULY 2, 2025—What do you get when you mix music, pictures, and teamwork? You get a fun project! That's exactly what 8th grade students in the Integrated Arts classes took part in as they wrapped up the 2024-2025 school year.

Students teamed up for the first-ever animation project, which ended with a viewing party last Wednesday.

The group project saw students team up and split up to create a short stop-motion animation story and compose the music that goes along with their art. The different parts were done in different editing softwares, with the final product being edited in Canva.

"There was one student who was the musician, one student was the animator, and one student who was the tech person," Music Teacher Allie Cranmer said. 

Cranmer partnered with fellow teacher Sami Dentel, and librarian Courtney Marr to oversee the project. Integrated arts fittingly mixes both the performing and more traditional arts, with a technological twist.

Dentel says students spent the first 15 weeks of the school year focused on art and then the next on music. This set the stage for the final 10 weeks of the year, which were focused on the project.

Students Erika, Elizabeth, and Aubrey decided to make their own spin on the 2025 blockbuster "The Minecraft Movie." They specifically focused their short film on the "chicken jockey" meme.

"We chose it because it was funny," Aubrey said. 

"I think it really helped us build a sense of team," Erika said. "We had to communicate with each other because it's not easy to make a short film like this."

 

We also spoke to Tylyr, who worked on his project on his own. His 10 second clip showcased a person who was hungry for cake and went to a cake store. He said the drawing was the most fun part, but putting everything together was a challenge.

“You had to move everything bit-by-bit,” Tylyr said. “And you had to make sure it didn’t look the same as the last frame.”

Dentel echoed what Erika said about the difficulty of producing these kinds of projects, as she said that it can sometimes take professional animators several years to complete a major project.

“The students had 8-10 weeks and they created animations anywhere from 15 seconds to 45 seconds, which is really impressive,” Dentel said.