Stoke your fires volunteer day 3 -the full day paper cut out workshop!

Today was a long day. It wasn’t really a bad day though and was quite enjoyable at times. I would have really appreciated an included lunch though for the full day, non paid, volunteering work.
Apart from the 30 min lunch break we managed to get ~10 minutes ‘break’ when we had no kids visit (At about 2 o’ clock) otherwise it was non stop all day, to the point of doing an extra 40 minutes of work as I didn’t want to let any kids down (which was nice of me, also some of the most receptive passionate friendly kids were in that last 50 minutes or so). We were flooded with groups of 8 at a few points try keeping that under control! Despite some tuition tips i was quite proud of coming up with (move it a finger space only ) Some kids just wanted to plonk their paper split pin puppets in a totally different location and position each time and spend ages doing a new pose. Occasionally afterwards they’d be confused why their animation was short and they couldn’t see/keep track of their character… We weren’t leading them blind at all, but if a kid won’t listen/comprehend and respond to ‘doing it properly’ then they’re not having fun; but if their ‘jumping upside down-whilst spinning-doing the splits-monsters’ mean they’re beaming and excited to move the model again next shot then let them do that .
There were some really good kids who had their timing and pacing perfect (like seriously better than final student pieces i’ve seen). Cartwheels & jumps were popular; some kid made some dude with a guitar prop strum and spin his guitar around really really very good! So they were great. There was no one who was really rude nor impatient ‘drag the kids away’ parents (within reason :-p)
It’s a shame i didn’t get to talk with the animator Tristan today as i have my cards on me now.
Though for all the work as a reward have been given a pass to the festival conference days now, wether i go for the full 4 days i don’t know, probably only the 2 animation days as too busy with other work.
Got the same shift tomorrow, may have to go onto a red bull drip to keep up the smiles and energy needed to deal with the hundreds of kids!