The Cortex Crew

Students

Catherine Croft ’21 uses movie magic to introduce kids to neuroscience in a fun, accessible way.

In an art studio in Los Angeles, Catherine Croft ’21 is adjusting a silicone puppet shaped like the hippocampus region of the human brain—but with a face. After some fine-tuning, Croft steps back and double-checks that everything is in place on her miniature set. Then, she snaps a photo and starts the process all over again. In a typical day, she’ll shoot more than 700 photos to create one minute of film. She’s racing against time to complete a 15-minute stop-motion video as part of her summer research project at Puget Sound.

“I’m creating a pilot episode of a children’s TV show about neuroscience,” Croft says. “It features four characters who go on adventures through the brain. In this episode, there’s an issue in the auditory cortex that they need to fix and along the way, kids watching this will learn how the brain registers and interprets sounds.”

Catherine Croft ’21

“I remember as a kid playing with my stuffed animals and wishing they were alive. With stop-motion, my creations do feel alive.”

As an art studio major and a neuroscience minor, Croft’s project is allowing her to indulge her passion for sculpture and her fascination with the anatomy of the brain. In her initial research, Croft devoted time to learning how professional animators create stop-motion movies and how educators approach teaching complex scientific concepts to children through multimedia.

Toiling away in her studio, Croft creates all the elements of her stop-motion world with silicone over wire frames. The custom-built set includes a three-inch-tall dining room table, a couch, and a refrigerator with the name of the show, Cortex Crew, spelled out in magnetic letters. Croft constructed the set within a green poster board box, serving as a green screen, which she’ll replace digitally in postproduction. She’s meticulous about every aspect of producing the show, from writing the script and designing the puppets to directing voice actors and editing.

Blue, green, purple, and yellow clay figures in various stages of progress stand on the corner of a work table

A blue clay figure, one of the characters from "The Cortex Crew" stands on the edge of a table

A "Cortex Crew" scene setup is shown in the background, with the scene visible on an iPad screen in the foreground

Clay figures from "The Cortex Crew" in a setup for a stop-motion photo shoot

Clay figure of a white refrigerator with "Cortex Crew" in colorful letters on the front

“Editing is my favorite part because that’s when you breathe life into your sculptures,” she says. “I remember as a kid playing with my stuffed animals and wishing they were alive. With stop-motion, my creations do feel alive.”

She hopes the final product will help make the field of neuroscience accessible to kids and encourage empathy for friends and classmates who are neuroatypical. Croft is aiming for high production values, which could enable her to pitch the show to a major studio in the future. She sees a lot of potential for educational stop-motion animation that’s tailored for a young audience and uses concepts from neuroscience to promote positive interpersonal relationships.

“This project has pushed me in so many ways. I’ve learned a lot about the animation industry and about the ways art and science can work together to reach a wider audience.”