workshop+outline

Session 1
1. Pass the Flip video camera around and each one videos another answering the question: What is animation? 2. Group discussion about students favorite animations. 3. Give kids an overview of what we'll be doing in Animation Workshop 4. Establish ground rules together. 5. Show sample animations to introduce 4 types of stopmotion animation (pixellation, object, clay, hand-drawn) 6. Group Animation Activity: Ask students to work as a group to create a pixellation with themselves as the objects.

Session 2
1. Pass the Flip video camera around and each one videos another answering the question: What is animation? 2. Group discussion reviewing different types of animation. 3. Show the Group animation from last week. Discuss how we made it. Ask is the movement smooth or choppy. (Compare with a sample pixellation video). Ask what could we do to make it more smooth? (breakdown movement into smaller bits and capture more frames). Ask kids to describe how we can make it better and longer. 4. Group Animation Activity: Play Sesame Street Number 10 song as the soundtrack for our next pixellation video. To understand how motion can be captured frame by frame (or picture by picture) ask the kids to think about a simple action they can do. For example waving to a friend or standing on a chair, raising a hat. Ask kids to imagine they are shop mannequins and they cannot move on their own, they have to be posed by the shop assistant (this helps them stay still until repositioned by the animators). Explain that i will take pictures of all ten kids one by one breaking down their chosen gestures or movements.

Session 3
1. Watch the pixalation video from the hallway. Is the frame steady? how do the animations look? smooth or jumpy? 2. Discuss rules for using computers and webcams. carry laptops with 2 hands. Set the webcam position and do not move. 3. Put students in teams of 2. Tell them create their own pixellations. The challenge is to create a 10 second animation using themselves. using a frame rate of 10fps that means they will need to capture 100 frames! The frame rate says how many images are displayed every second a movie is played. The higher the frame rate a movie has the smoother objects move in the movie. You measure frame rate in frames per second (fps). 24 frames are combined to create one second of animation in film, 30 frames are combined to create one second of TV. Stop motion animation looks good at a frame rate as low as 10 fps. How many seconds in a minute. To create a minute long animation movie how many frames do we need to capture?

Session 4
1. Ask each student to pick an animation workstation candy, bugs or whiteboard drawing. 2. Give kids a challenge with the candy and bugs, to sort candy into groups, create patterns with different types of candy and bugs, etc. Setup 3 animation stations, with rolled paper. attempt to create a syc wall. record video of the spilling out of candy as intro to stopmotion animation.

Session 5
1. Watch the pixalation videos. Discuss choices: Also show Youtube how to special effects techniques (bug flying).
 * continuing hallway pixellations (see how to Youtube) using video camera/tripod/laptop,
 * building a stage or set for objects you've brought in (with big boxes and building armitures),
 * creating whiteboard animations (show examples) at the table,
 * or object animations (eg. candy, bugs, and other new objects) on the floor (creating a syc wall).

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