The 20 Cent Quest is an Australian ATOM Award-winning Macromedia Flash animation created at Lara Primary School by two grade 6 students in 2003. It was created by Nicholas Bouvier and Matthew Heilbronn and won two national awards for K-8 student animation in 2003.
Matthew and Nicholas began by learning to use Flash, and creating characters individually. They then worked out the basic plot of two characters bumping into each other, losing a coin, and then searching for said coin. Their story grew and evolved throughout production. The production didn't happen quickly, it took several terms to complete. In the early days, the animation was very basic, originally viewers had to click on the character's speech bubble each time they said something.
The two learned to use layers effectively, insert sound, motion tweens, morphing and became competent in using Macromedia Flash. After going to Canberra for their grade six camp, they included photos of the War Memorial and Parliament House and then included John Howard (Who had the letters "PM" on his head which, of course, stands for "Prime Minister"), Simon Crean and Ian Thorpe into the animation. The 20 Cent Quest has been shown on local Geelong television, The National Film and Sound Archive, in Canberra and many other places.
The animation won both K-8 categories of 'Best Junior (K8) Film/Video Production' and the 'Best Student Multimedia Production—Junior (K-8)' at the 2003 ATOM Awards.