"Faceless" is an animated short film produced by student Steven Minaya, a sophomore in the Communications Academy. His film was a finalist in the 2021 Derek Freese Youth Media Film Festival. The annual festival is sponsored by the Temple University Film & Media Arts Department.

First we watched the 1929 Oscar winning Disney short animation The Skeleton Dance. Then students were challenged to come up with their own original stories. The story had to have a setting, at least one original character, a plot with a beginning, middle and end, and, of course, a skeleton that comes to life.

The 12 Principles of Animation are; Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose, Follow Through and Overlapping Action, Slow in & Slow Out, Arcs, Secondary Action, Timing, Exaggeration, Solid Drawing and Appeal.

For our midterm, Mrs. Wintemberg's Visual Design Students had to pick the three principles they thought were the most important and create short films using them. Here are some of our films.

Hand Drawn Turnaround Animation, original character and animation by Communications Academy Junior, Johnny Nguyen.

Six Perth Amboy High School students won a total of ten awards in the Scholastic Art and Writing Program. Janice Fe Sonsiadek (Senior) won a Silver Key Award and an Honorable Mention for Photography and Film. Nayelis Vargas (Junior - Communications Academy) won the Silver Key Award for her Visual Design. The following students received Honorable Mentions for their artwork:

Nathan Torres (Senior - Communications Academy), Alexis Plasencia (Junior), Samantha Uroza (Senior - 4 Honorable Mentions), Jaylyn Murillo (Senior - Communications Academy).

Their pieces were chosen for recognition from nearly 320,000 original works in 28 different categories of art and writing. Scholastic is the oldest, most prestigious high school art and writing contest in the nation. Many colleges take these awards into consideration when determining admissions and scholarships. Congratulations to all students!

MARCH 2021

March is "Arts in Our Schools" month. Please email me at briawilson@paps.net Subject: "Arts In Our Schools" with artwork or performances created by your students for the March VPA newsletter. Please include a short description of what was created and how students went about creating it.