This course explores the principles that give short animated film stories cohesion, structure, meaning and the power to communicate, with the goal to enhance the telling of the students' own stories through animated film. Students undertake creative and critical methods to engage various approaches to story development. The course explores traditional and non-traditional story forms, while exploring the relationships of message and audience, genre and structure, character and performance. Story-making approaches include storyboarding, beat boards, research, observational journaling, proposal writing, pitches, and assorted experimental approaches such as flow charts and mapping. Students gain the ability to employ various structures, genres and methods for the purpose of crafting effective stories for short animated films.