The project "Slithers" began at the beginning of our eighth school year. It was our second (and last) year of middle school. Our idea came from the art teacher, who had experimented with claymation over the summer and wanted to see what students could produce.

It was something neither of us had ever even thought about before, but we were both ready for the challenge. The idea for the snake came from Alison. She suggested it because it was a very simple character, and it would be easy to reproduce into multiple ‘doubles’ if required.

With our idea agreed upon and a rough story board mapped out, we began to work on the sets. All of the props in our movie, including the actual sets, were either bought at a local miniature shop, or created by us. Most of the props were our own little personal works of art.

After that, we began the hard part: the filming. For this, we used a Kodak digital camera. We would take a picture, move the character very slightly, then take another picture. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much of a tripod, but we used what we had.

When the camera was full, we would download each picture onto an Apple computer. All the necessary touch-ups were done frame-by-frame using Photoshop.

When the filming was done, and no more fancy image editing was needed, we persuaded Mr. Sangster (Community Access Centre manager) to zip the file, all 900-something pictures, and transfer it onto a computer with iMovie.

Using that program, we edited the final product by adding music, sound effects, and transitions. With the movie finally finished, we got Mr. Gallant (the computer technology teacher) to put it on a VHS tape.

Thus, our movie, "Slithers".