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“Bubble,” a short animated film by UCLA alumna Maija Burnett, screened at the Los Ang

A room full of pencil-wielding toddlers or teenagers with the hopes of being animators may sound like a disappointment waiting to happen.

But thanks to Maija Burnett, dreams like those are being fulfilled on a regular basis.

The 2005 graduate of the UCLA Masters of Fine Arts in Animation program is now teaching animation workshops for children at the Los Angeles International Children’s Film Festival. These one-hour classes focus on teaching children the basics of several aspects of animation, including traditional animation, stop-motion animation and even the fundamentals of favorite Hollywood characters.

Since her graduation a year ago, Burnett has been very busy, working on films such as “Curious George,” “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties,” and recently assisting UCLA alumnus Shane Acker on his film, “9.”

But Burnett, who is now also a professor of the required English Composition 3 course at UCLA, has been happy to add the festival’s workshops to her plate, as they have been a great opportunity to combine her passions for both animation and teaching.

“I absolutely love teaching kids of all ages. It’s really fun to kind of take the mask off how the process works because they are really curious,” Burnett said. “They see these films all the time, and they see special effects all the time. So it’s nice (to show them) this is how you do it.”

The second year of the annual festival, which was held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art last weekend and the weekend before, opened with a 20th-anniversary screening of “Stand By Me,” directed by UCLA alumnus Rob Reiner.

The rest of the festival featured over 100 youth-oriented live-action and animated films from 30 different countries around the world as well as question-and-answer sessions with various filmmakers and actors.

“The whole idea of the festival is to introduce the kids to different cultures, nationalities and filmmaking techniques,” said Dan Bennett, executive director of the festival. “We treat it as more of an arts and education event, more so than an entertainment or celebrity event. The idea is to really look at film more closely and help kids understand it as an art form.”

Burnett’s workshops, teaching children how to animate, add a finishing touch to the experience of animation.

“I think kids just really enjoy animation because it’s so different,” Burnett said. “You aren’t constrained by any of the rules that you are by live-action film.”

Burnett helps children learn how films such as “Curious George” are created by displaying 12 hand-sketched drawings per second, and explains how films such as “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties” are hybrids of live-action and animated filmmaking.

To facilitate the learning process, she walks her students through the creation of their own animated flip books.

“Seeing the films, hearing the filmmakers and then being empowered to sit down and draw themselves I think is a good process for (the children),” Burnett said.

Burnett has been a part of the International Children’s Film Festival since it first came to Los Angeles last year. Her four-and-a-half minute animated short, “Bubble,” a project undertaken while she was still a student at UCLA, screened at the festival.

“Bubble” was immediately well received, not just at the festival in Los Angeles but at festivals in Vancouver, San Diego and Chicago as well.

“We really liked ‘Bubble’ and we thought (Burnett) would be a good person to teach animation since she had so much experience,” Bennett said. “We were showing her film at the festival and she just had a really great personality for teaching.”

Profiles run every Tuesday in the A&E section.