Animation artist/educator Jayla Patton

Animation is hotter than ever, whether it’s anime, stop-motion, computer-generated or hand-drawn.

Jayla Patton teaches kids how to animate. She is a local artist and part of Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ Youth Media Program, which is designed for youngsters ages 8 to 18. During the school year these classes are held on Saturdays at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Shadyside. In the summer, weeklong day camps are available.

Ms. Patton says one day when she was 13 her family’s TV cable went out, so her brother brought home a “How to Draw Manga” book. This sparked an obsession that grew from there.

While enrolled at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, she worked as a teaching assistant at the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild. Finding she had a natural connection to budding teenage artists, Ms. Patton now teaches high schoolers and middle schoolers regularly.

At PCA she has taught both mixed-media animation and hand-drawn animation, as well as out-of-thebox classes, such as the popular Legomation class.

“Legomation uses the technique of stop-motion animation — each figure is moved a tiny bit, followed by a picture being taken,” she explains. When the individual pictures are connected together, the illusion of movement is created.

She also taught a class on the work and style of Hayao Miyazaki, the legendary director of such hand-drawn animated films as “Spirited Away” and “My Neighbor Totoro.” Students worked on drawing anime-styled characters repeatedly on paper, then they brought them to life by taking pictures of the drawings, in order to animate them.

The process is both tedious and rewarding. “On average, the entire class’s work clocked in at about 1 to 3 minutes, and they walked out with giant stacks of paper,” she says.

As far as digital animation, she says: “The ability to undo may seem alluring, and one reason they say digital art is ‘easier,’ but it’s just a tool, and like any tool you need to practice and work with it to improve.”

Outside the classroom, Ms Patton spends time working on her own art — both digital and hand-drawn.

To see some of her work: http://jayla-patton-art.deviantart. To view classes she is scheduled to teach: http://center.pfpca.org/education.