Working alongside Head of Animation Loyd Price and Aardman Co-founder and Creative Director Peter Lord we have devised Stop Motion 1: the first of our industry-led online stop-motion courses. It covers 12-weeks of supported teaching and tasks to build the right foundations and develop practical skills in character animation, delivered by a team of highly experienced tutors and mentors. This course is aimed at people from the industry, university and self-taught animators to help improve their practice, skills and abilities. It falls under our Industry Training category of courses, so is taught at a level that expects some experience of animation beforehand.

You will be introduced to the week's activities via a live-streamed lecture with the course leader Mark Simon Hewis where you can ask questions, share ideas, discuss animation techniques and watch inspiring work. You will then be invited to explore the week's masterclasses and subsequent tasks, run and hosted by the animation team. These lessons have been filmed especially for you and this course alone. You can watch them as many times as you want, pause, freeze, and step through frame by frame should you wish. The tasks are usually in the form of two films which invite you to attempt a task at home. When completed you will upload your finished task to our secure and private course community where your mentor will watch it before your weekly feedback session. From week 8 to 11 you are supported while you make your final moving image piece. There will be a fully supported active online community hub where you can share ideas, thoughts and problems throughout the course.

We estimate that the weekly activities will take you a minimum of five and a maximum of 10 hours to complete. Once you start making your final moving project, you decide how much time you want to dedicate to it.