This rotoscoped animation is the result of a collaboration between more than 80 students from 11 schools in 4 countries around the world.

Rotoball 2008 from The Carrot Revolution on Vimeo.

The Rotoball project began as a class assignment for students in David Gran’s Advanced Video class at Huntington High School in 2005.  It soon became a mainstay of the video program.  It continued under the direction of Heather Swan when David moved to China to teach at the Shanghai American School in 2006.  In 2008, the project was going to run concurrently for the first time in these two schools on opposite sides of the world.   This was the starting point for our international collaborative project.

Rotoscoping is the process of using a filmed image as a template for a frame by frame animation.  For this project, students are asked to animate themselves receiving the ball, interacting with it as it is transformed into something new, and passing it on as it is transformed back into its original state. The ball becomes something different for each person and each new encounter.

Below is a list of the participating schools, their locations and the cooperating instructor:

Shanghai American School    

Shanghai, China

David Gran

Huntington High School         

Huntington, New York

Heather Swan

Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti      

Christchurch, New Zealand   

Harold Kho

Charleston Catholic High    

Charleston, West Virginia          

Rebecca Burch

Robinson Secondary School   

Fairfax, Virginia

Asha Jones

The Haverford School             

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania         

Matthew Frock

Ealing Institute of Media          

London, England

Nick Smith

Dryden Elementary School    

Arlington Heights, Illinois          

Tricia Fuglestad

Monarch High School             

Coconut Creek, Florida

Ann Ayers

West Potomic High School   

Alexandria, Virginia

Amy Stoll

Thanks to art teacher, David Gran, for coming up with the Rotoball idea and for opening it up to other art educators resulting in a global collaboration and shared creative expression by the participants.