WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — At one desk, paper birds of prey pirouette while passing a platinum ball between their talons. At a table nearby, a laughing baby in a vintage orange jumper spins on his head while a muscled gymnast flexes his biceps — before an elephant charges them both and knocks them off the page.

Creativity was the keyword at the Collage Animation Pop-Up hosted by Junction Arts & Media in their studio in the Gates Briggs Building in downtown White River Junction on Saturday as groups of artists young and old gathered to practice and learn stop-motion animation. Key to the proceedings was Thetford-based collage artist Rich Fedorchak, who spent much of the four-hour session assisting would-be button makers and collagers.

Some of Fedorchak’s art was displayed around the room, including a 3D glass box holding peculiar items like an animal skull and toy sneakers and a paper collage mashing together a Remington landscape and a 1950s comic illustration of a UFO. Fedorchak said his artwork, a trade which he’s plied since the mid-1970s, is heavily influenced by surrealism.

“The juxtaposition of things that you wouldn’t normally see together is what kind of turns me on,” Fedorchak said.

The art of collage and assemblage — basically collage in three dimensions — first appealed to Fedorchak because he didn’t need any formal art training to do it, he said. He just needed reams of old magazines to cut figures out of.

Piles of magazines, calendars and art books sat atop tables equipped with taped-down paper easels equipped with iPads so those attending the workshop could try their hand at stop-motion animating their visions with the online app Stop Motion Studio. On one table, a cutout of a magazine cover of the cast of the TV show Succession brushed up against a People magazine cutout of Dolly Parton.

One of the workshop’s patrons, Lynn Graznak, was busy at work on the project with the laughing baby, musclebound gymnast and blustering elephant, which she titled “Got your nose.” An assemblage artist herself, Graznak, who lives in Newbury, Vt., had come to the event with her granddaughter to learn more about making stop-motion animation.

Graznak, 73, said she was still figuring out the technology, but continued to add more pieces to her project as the event went on.

“Pretty rough, but it’s the first time I’ve ever touched any of this,” Graznak said.

Ten-year-old Eliza Rapf, who visited the workshop with her dad, Alex Rapf, and mom, Melanie Adsit, was already quite comfortable with both the iPad and the computer program. She didn’t need much help as she dove into her animation project that featured a hawk and a falcon, cut out of a National Geographic magazine her parents brought with them, tossing a ball around while a towering moon rose up behind them.

The family had recently moved to White River Junction from New York, and Adsit said it was nice to find events like this one hosted locally.

Rapf set about her project at a rapid pace, moving the cutout animals around the board as her parents looked on (and cut out more animals from the Nat Geo magazine). Adsit said her daughter loved setting up similar projects at home with her stuffed animals and uses the same software to record them, so she was already a pro before they attended the workshop.

“I’m making the story up as I go along,” Rapf said. “I kinda just want (it to be) random animals doing things.”

Ray Couture can be reached at 1994rbc@gmail.com.

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