CHILDREN from Princetown Primary School have been enjoying the unique opportunity of creating an animation based on one of Dartmoor's legends.

The Year 2 and 3 pupils from the school's Kestrel Class worked with Dartmoor National Park and Animated Exeter to create a 'spooky' four minute animation telling the tale of Vixana, the witch of Vixen Tor — a legend chosen by the youngsters.

The production began with Ashley Thorpe from Animated Exeter running three workshops with the pupils and together with their teachers, working through all the different stages of the film, including the storyboard, making the characters, writing the script, filming each frame and recording the sound effects.

The final animation contains everything you need in a good film — a nasty witch, a hero and a spooky location.

Towards the end of term the children were able to see the fruits of their labour at a premier in Dartmoor National Park Authority's Princetown Visitor Centre.

Theola Brimacombe, a pupil from Kestrel Class, said that the making of the animation was 'great fun' and 'awesome'.

'We narrated the animation but Ashley did the spooky noises. We all thought it was awesome,' she said.

Ali Hirst, headmistress of Princetown Primary School, said: 'We were delighted to be given this opportunity of making an animated film.

'It was a really interesting project for the children and they learnt lots of new techniques. It looks great on the big screen.'

The film will continue to be shown throughout the year in the centre's 'spooky cinema'.

But that's not the end of the story — in addition to the continued screening of the film at the centre, Dartmoor National Park has ensured a legacy of film production at the school by providing Princetown Primary School with their own animation software to enable them to make more films.