I express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Christine Veras, Director of experimenta.L lab (Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication), for allowing me to conduct an introduction to stop-motion animation workshop with the undergraduate and graduate students at The University of Texas at Dallas.

The workshop invited students to join in a socially engaged collaborative effort in depicting a happy representation of the future with stories of hope, resilience, and inspiration during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current situation around the world has shattered many dreams and aspirations. By demonstrating a reciprocal relationship between artistic production and social and political mechanisms, the participatory nature of narrative storytelling, empathy, and direct dialog has become essential in bringing those discussions to the forefront. This workshop utilized the stop-motion animation technique to highlight the importance of mental health and well-being, and demonstrated how socially engaged art could act as a communal vehicle for advocacy, intervention, and healing. The duration of the workshop was four weeks, with the first week focusing on idea generation, sketching the puppet, constructing the armature of the puppet, and creating the body mass, the second week concentrated on sculpting the face with Sculpey, the third week centered around embellishing the puppet by sewing the attire and other accessories, hairstyling, defining facial features, etc., and the fourth week concentrated on creating stop-motion walk-cycles for each of the puppets using DragonFrame.