Animation educator Gail Banker died of a stroke on Sunday, September 13, the day after her 60th birthday. For the past 13 years, she taught animation to children and adults in the New England area: as an instructor at Hanover High School in Hanover, New Hampshire; as a counselor at the Charles River Creative Arts Program in Dover, Massachusetts; and as founder of Single-Frame Studio in Norwich, Vermont, where she ran weekly animation workshops for children. She also taught adult animation classes at her studio and through various continuing education programs. A recent project was "Kids Speaking to Kids," for which her students created public service announcements that aired on public access TV stations. In addition to helping hundreds of young people make their own films and learn the art of animation, Gail was an animator. While studying at Harvard University’s renowned Carpenter Center animation program, she completed the film “Sketches for the Elephant Child” (1981) and later, in the mid-1980s, she made an animated rotoscoped film called “Handcraft.” She also studied with Yvonne Andersen, founder of the Yellow Ball Workshop. She is survived by her husband, four children, and five grandchildren. Gail Banker’s animation workshops were profiled in the March 1997 issue of Animation World Magazine:
“Kids Making Animation: A Sampling of Children's Animation Workshops Around the World.” 