The Cruise Ship Crashed For No Real Reason, Which Pleased The Ghost King

I spent the week helping my man Andrew teach a claymation class to sixteen kids, aged 9 to 13. It was challenging, hectic, irritating, and the most rewarding thing I have done all year. Kids' minds are so psychedelic and innocently creepy, and just having those sixteen fertile mental faucets flying around the room all week was an occasionally frustrating and frequently fascinating experience.

Andrew Morgan has taught claymation to kids since about 1995, helping them develop stories, characters, and sound effects for short film shot and dubbed entirely in-camera. We started shooting this Monday morning by ten, and finished the final seven-minute short this afternoon by 2 p.m. Here's some stills taken on the set, intertwined with a synopsis of the film. Click here for some of Morgan's other productions.



The cruise ship crashed for no real reason, dumping its four passengers out into a sea that looked like chalk on black construction paper. The Ghost King saw this through his crystal ball and sent my carefully handcrafted ghost ship made of tree bark out to rescue the drowning people. As it turns out, one of the now-rescued cruise ship passengers had stolen a treasure map from some pirates, who were hot on the trail. Once the passengers awakened on the island's shore, a giant talking turtle picked the smuggler's pockets with its mouth and found the map...



Before the cyclops mermaid and the square man with the green nose could help, the pirates abducted the weary travelers and took them to the heart of an underground cave on the island. Just as the pirates and the travelers were about to uncover what might have been the treasure or just an everyday dragon egg, the dragon returned and beat everyone up. The cowboy traveler and the others escaped from the cave, to the swell of music sung by children and the final credits.

posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 7:55 PM