My latest class project was to animate a conflict between two or more chess pieces. I chose a theme of classic adventure movies. Keeping with chess conventions, the Queen is the strongest piece on the board and is doing all she can to protect the King.
All the modeling and rendering was done in Maya, audio was done in Audacity and everything was put together in Windows Movie Maker. The animation is all keyframed and no piece are parented to any other.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it.