Savannah College of Art and Design alumnus Alex Kamer’s senior film “Easter Sunday” features puppets and live action.

Few people would admit publicly to being creatively inspired by cartoons, but Savannah College of Art and Design alumnus Alex Kamer (B.F.A., film and television, 2004) says he watches little else on television. Kamer is a production assistant for the stop-motion animation studio Shadow Animation in Hollywood, Calif. The studio produces the shows “Robot Chicken” and “Moral Orel” for the Adult Swim block on the Cartoon Network.

“I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker, and although my previous work has been live-action, I’ve always been an avid fan of cartoons,” said Kamer. “I’ve realized that my own live-action shorts are quite cartoony, and I feel that the stories I would love to tell would actually work better as cartoons than as Hollywood movies.”

After graduating from SCAD in 2004, Kamer, a New York City native, lived in Atlanta for a year, editing wedding and corporate videos before moving to Los Angeles to intern with Shadow Animation. He was then offered a full-time job at the studio.

As a production assistant, Kamer aids animators in the studio by changing out sets when scenes are finished. He is responsible for dressing the set, setting up rough camera angles, arranging the props and puppets, and coordinating the set with the director of photography and the art director.

“Stop-motion animation is a very unique and expressive way to tell a story,” said Kamer. The technique involves posing puppets or toys, rather than sculpting clay figures as in Claymation. He describes stop-motion as being somewhere between animation and live action. “It’s animation, but you’re dealing with lights, cameras, sets and three real dimensions, so in that respect stop-motion is a bit closer to me because of my live-action background.”

Kamer noted that television production moves at a much faster pace than film, and the challenge exists in finding a balance between quickly meeting deadlines and making the piece look great. For example, the set department at Shadow Animation is sometimes required to build almost 50 sets for a single episode, and the animators must move quickly to pose the figures and make the shots look good.

“Robot Chicken,” now in its second season on Cartoon Network, was created by actor Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, editorial director of publications for Wizard Entertainment and former editor of Toyfare magazine. Spawned from Green’s love of playing with toys and named for a dish at the Chinese restaurant where the creators dined while writing the show, “Robot Chicken” uses the toys and cartoon characters of the 1980s in a random variety-show parody of pop culture.

“‘Robot Chicken’ is certainly the coolest project I’ve worked on since graduating from SCAD,” said Kamer.

He said his SCAD experience taught him about time management and maintaining a work ethic as well as composition and storytelling. He credits film and television professors Annette Haywood-Carter and John Drop with helping him develop his writing, directing and filmmaking skills.

His senior film, “Easter Sunday” (2004), won awards for best actress, best cinematography and best sound in the SCAD Senior Show finals. The film later screened at the Hollywood Film Festival, the St. Louis Film Festival and the Los Angeles Short Film Festival.

His other filmmaking credits include “People of Tact” (2004), “Camel Cricket City” (2003), “Moth” (2003) and “Sick Bacchus” (2003).

Kamer will soon be working on the second season of “Moral Orel,” another stop-motion animation cartoon for Adult Swim. The show chronicles the misadventures of Orel, an innocent little boy who tries to do what God would want him to do despite things always going wrong.

Kamer is eager to get his own projects off the ground, including a piece he’s writing, which he hopes to produce and direct as an animated series. He expects to continue working in television, because the medium is a large outlet for animation.

“I want to create something that will really blow kids’ minds,” said Kamer. “I want it to inspire kids to do something of their own, but at the same time I want it to be something they could easily watch 20 years later, pick up on new things and enjoy equally as an adult.”