Sarah Thompson has worked on films such as The Corpse Bride, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Hobbit.Photos / Lewis Gardner
Sarah Thompson has worked on films such as The Corpse Bride, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Hobbit.Photos / Lewis Gardner
Sarah Thompson loved being creative from an early age, so it was only natural that she would go on to study graphic design and complete a degree in animation.
Born in Britain, Thompson accepted what was supposed to be a four-week unpaid job in East London after studying and it turned out to be an amazing opportunity.
A year-and-a-half later, Thompson found herself working as a runner on the set of the highly acclaimed stop-motion animation film The Corpse Bride, directed by Tim Burton.
Thompson was awarded a credit for her work on the 2005 film and went on to be credited in Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox and Peter Jackson's The Hobbit.
Hannon Hill, Monique Taylor and Cohn Taylor get some lessons in animation at Thompson's workshop held in the Fordell Hall over the holidays.
Now Thompson is introducing rural students in the Whanganui area to animation by visiting several schools and hosting holiday workshops.
Thompson said she was stoked with her workshop at Fordell Hall during the Christmas holidays.
"I've not taught before so I kept it fairly low key and didn't advertise. It turned out I didn't need to, I had 12 children and had to turn people away," Thompson said.
"I did an introductory talk about 19th century optical toys, taught them how animation works and showed them some flipbooks."
Thompson visited Mangamahu, Fordell and Whangaehu schools in 2018 and has more visits and workshops planned for this year.
She lives in Mangamahu with her partner, Jamie Crathers, who she met while visiting New Zealand for a second time. They have two children together.
Knowing there was little going on in Whanganui when it comes to animation, Thompson spoke with Whanganui & Partners about the idea of running the workshops.
They were enthusiastic about it, so Thompson applied for and was granted funding through the Whanganui District Council Creative Communities Scheme.
Thompson hopes to inspire students like Nathan Vincent to animate their art
"What I was hoping to achieve with these workshops was to inspire kids to take their artwork and turn it into an animated piece or start making it move," Thompson said.
"I want to run more holiday programmes like I've just done at Fordell, culminating in all of their work being edited into one piece and having an outdoor cinema screening.
"Ideally it would be like a drive-in movie with tractors and quad bikes and utes and things."
Thompson has future plans to start up workshops in the city and is looking for spaces to work in and collaborators to work with.
An early idea she has is to run a Saturday animation club.
"It's a fun way to learn and it's really hands-on," she said.
