The International Animation Festival of Brazil, Anima Mundi, takes place every year in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In the 25 years since it was created by four Brazilian animators, Anima Mundi has exhibited more than 9,000 films from 70 different countries to an audience of 1.2 million people. The festival is unique in its approach to community engagement, offering free stop-motion, pixilation, and zoetrope-making workshops to kids and families — while also taking over the city center with animation installations, and distributing a selection of animated shorts to smaller towns and cities across Brazil. Festival leaders also organize the ‘Anima Forum’, which offers masterclasses, feedback sessions, and professional networking opportunities for Brazilian animators and filmmakers.

What’s your ‘note to self’ to read in 5 years? In this TED-Ed + Anima Mundi animation workshop in Brazil, a student named Olivia animates the unwrapping of crumpled paper to reveal her note to self. Translated, it reads: ‘Don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today’.

TED-Ed was honored to be invited this year to present at the Anima Forum, and to facilitate animation workshops with some of Anima Mundi’s fabulous animation instructors. We also invited local TED-Ed Clubs to participate. As part of the TED-Ed + Anima Mundi animation workshop, we asked the high-school aged participants to write ‘a note to self’ to be read in 5 years. We encouraged them to be as silly or as feel-good-motivational as they wanted to be. They worked alone and in groups for about an hour, deciding what to say in their notes and and conceptualizing them as animated ideas. After that, we spent an hour shooting the animations. Here’s what they had to say to their future selves:

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