Tomoyasu Murata (村田朋泰) taught short courses in cel animation and puppet animation this summer at TMC Nishi-Nippori Atelier. He has posted a 9 second clip of the work done by the puppet animation class on youtube. While this may seem like a very short film, it would have involved a lot of work on the part of the students. First constructing the puppets, then learning how to position them in order to take each shot. 9 seconds times 24 frames equals 216 frames that made into the final result... with a lot of trial and error along the way. My favourite for character design is the large-headed character with glasses (second from right in the screencap above). For innovation in presentation, I like the shy couple on far left - the animator of those two managed to put humour (however dark) into a very short amount of time.
