There are many different film and animation techniques and software that can be used in a classroom and a range of creative approaches. See below for a fascinating variety of ways that teachers have also planned for the use of animation with their classes. Pick up tips and find out the pitfalls that can be avoided:
This animation won third place in the Swiscars
8 Times 8 - St Mary's Catholic Primary School
This animated rhyme from St Mary's Catholic School in Swindon will help you remember your eight times table.
Text: KS2eight to 07624 808422
In this example from Yr 6, pupils Becky and Bella at St Michael's Aldbourne in Wiltshire. They combined their work in History, Literacy and ICT to create their animations that summarised the story of the wooden horse from Greek mythology. Excellent use of simple backgrounds (note black cloth for the night scene).
Click to play »
This stop frame animation from Sophie, Rhys, Ryan, James and Hannah from Fynamore Primary School, Calne on the fate of Henry VIII's six wives was completed as part of a history project on the Tudors. Lovely sound includes narrative, instrumental music and screams!
Click to play »
This example was created by Lorna and Millie Year 3 pupils from Urchfont Primary in Devizes and had been working on settings in literacy and combined this with ICT to create digital stories using 2Create a Story.
Click to play »
Case Study: Marwood Primary School, Devon
After Oscar’s excellent workshop I was enthusiastically looking forward to our planned “Film Day”. I had gathered some sample resources, downloaded some inspirational stop frame animations as examples, created a PowerPoint presentation to kick-off the day (attached) and expectations were high! However, so was the steep learning curve that we all travelled along that day. The children were inspired and diligently “brain-stormed” in teams, settling on a plan, and recording their outline on a storyboard. Their ideas were a bit ambitious but hey whatever the commitment was total! Unfortunately I had not looked at the weather forecast for that day which at that point was the hottest of the year! Do you know what the melting point of Plasticine is? Well, by midday the temperature had exceeded that, the reinforced characters had started to list precariously, were strengthened with yet more wire, more clear plastic straws, cocktail sticks and anything else that might provide some rigidity, including spells in the fridge! By mid- afternoon there were some liquid blobs of “once-plasticine” in various locations and a flurry of activity to get the filming “in the can”. Some understandable theatrical “director type tantrums” but all things considered a successful outcome and what a brilliant team-building project. The children were totally engrossed with making the characters, scenery and props and produced animations that were a great team effort. Along the way they learnt so much about camera angles, lighting, backgrounds, and animation techniques, let alone the ICT skills needed for editing and composing their own music and making it fit! Would I do it again? Yes, absolutely but not in one day!
Jane Rattue - Marwood Primary
This animation won second place in the Swiscars
Life Cycle, Starring Wiggle - Lawn Primary School
Wiggle explains all about his life cycle in this lively animation from Lawn Primary School. Text: KS2wiggle to 07624 808422
Case Study: Otterton C of E Primary, Devon
Deborah, a class teacher from Otterton C of E Primary in Devon attended the Devon animation workshop in March and returned inspired by Oscar’s workshop session. This is what she said about how she went about the work with her class:
“Every year we use a different stimulus for the animation. Last year we based our animation on a piece of classical music. The year before that the animation was based on Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream".
This year it was part of a whole school arts week based on the Jurassic Coast. We read the book Dinosaurs and all that Rubbish (Michael Foreman) and the children discussed in pairs how they thought they could develop the story and make it their own. I showed the children some previous animations so that they could have some understanding of the limitations/difficulties they would face. Each pair then storyboarded their own versions of the story.
The children then pitched their ideas to the rest of the class and together they chose their favourite parts from each version of the story. This gave us a 'final storyboard' from which to work. Every child was involved in every part of the process. Each child made a plasticine model. The children decided on scenery and backdrops, which they made and painted themselves. Once everything was prepared I split the children into groups of 4. The groups took it in turns to animate a scene. The scenes they animate are not necessarily the scenes that they have written themselves. Experience has taught me that the children take much more care over someone else's scene than they do their own! Once all the scenes were complete we decided on which sound recordings we would need to make. Again, every child had a go at recording and changing their voices on Audacity (we used every child's recording of the word "everybody" for the final scene).
We then decided on sound effects that could be added. I found the music myself. Originally we were going to make our own music, but time was always going to be an issue and unfortunately we ran out of it! Next year maybe.
Incidentally, while small groups were animating, the rest of the class were carrying out other arts week activities such as observational drawing, painting etc. You need lots of 'holding activities' to make it workable if you decide on a whole class animation. The benefits are that you end up with a decent length film that the whole class have contributed to. It is a great way of getting children to collaborate because they have a common goal.
We've managed to upload it to Eurocreator
www.eurocreator.com. This was fraught with difficulties and unfortunately the quality isn't that great, but I'm pleased it's finally up there - the Eurocreate team were amazingly patient! I'm now looking into ways our school can ditch the use of Digi-blue cameras for animations as these have been the cause of many problems over the last three years when it comes to uploading the films onto websites. Here is our animation. The children are really pleased with it. I hope you can take five minutes to watch it...”
Click to play
Top Tips:
There are lots of examples of techniques on Oscar's blog. Oscar says you can make storyboarding too complicated. How about getting the children to bullet point the stages in their story? Why not start simple, using a downward facing webcam over a table? Shapes of paper or cut out drawings can tell the story as children move..take a shot...move...take a shot.
Case Study - Grampound Road Village School
First of all, can I say how much I enjoyed the workshop with Oscar and thought it was extremely useful. My interest in animation in education has increased greatly since and I now have my own copy of I Can Animate to work with.
Before I continue, I'd just like to put my comments in context as this may help you to better understand where I'm coming from on some of the points I make - qualified teachers may well have done things differently. My name is Ryan Davies and I'm currently waiting to start my Early Years Scitt course in September. For the past 10 months I've been helping out at Grampound Road Village School to gain some experience at Primary level. I've been teaching part-time on a degree course for the past 5 years.
After the workshop with Oscar, I started an after-school animation club with the hope that some of the children might be able to enter their films into competitions before the end of term. However, we were unable to reach this stage due to shortage of time. One of the children shot a very short film last Thursday and two more will complete theirs this Thursday (hopefully!) as it's the last session this year.
One of the things that concerned me at the start of the club and was highlighted on Thursday, was the difficulty around story and storyboarding in particular. Some children don't want to be drawing out their scenes or writing anything down. The story details, according to them, are all in their heads and they see no need for the storyboarding etc. They are just so excited about it that they want to get on with building the characters and shooting it. However, for the first session, I asked the children to draw pictures of their characters, colour them in and describe them. This was a good start because it did get them thinking more clearly about what they were going to make. Although I recognise the importance of storyboarding (coming from a media background myself) I was concerned that the children wouldn't get enough time making their characters and shooting their films, so I didn't push them into completing a storyboard. I suppose I wanted them to explore what was possible with the plasticine and get them "doing" something creatively with that as soon as possible.
Whilst it certainly would have been better to have had a storyboard for each of the films that were proposed, the films that will be complete by the end of next week will provide a valuable reference tool for me as a teacher and for the children. They can be used to discuss what was good, what could have been improved and how etc. I have attached a few photos of the characters the children made for you to have a look at.
I am also in the middle of an activity with children in year 1,2,3 and 4. I wanted them to make an aimation about things coming to life in their classroom when they had gone home for the day. To introduce this, I made a very short animation (which I will attach in a separate email due to file size limit of this message) showing what happens in the staff room when the teachers have gone home for the day and showed this to the children. I asked them to tell me what moved, what parts of the objects/furniture moved and how (slide, spin etc). They were asked to look around their classroom at the objects and furniture they could see and think about how they might come alive after school. What would they do? Where would they go? How would they move? They were quite excited about this and set about writing a story about objects coming to life in their classroom. I didn't set a title for it as they were eager to come up with a variety of their own! Some of the stories that came up were quite pleasing and it provided their regular teacher with raw evidence of their writing skills (use of story language, punctuation and grammar etc) through a different exercise.
Having gained some very good ideas from them, we will attempt the making of a short film in their classrooms on Wednesday (that will be interesting!).
I have also done some very, very basic animation with reception children (also attached in a separate email to follow). In the past few weeks, they have drawn and coloured their own desert islands and drawn, cut out and coloured some animals/creatures/objects to go with it. Last week, we made some very short videos to show their islands and the animals that live on them or around them. I took control of the computer (to ensure that the children were focused on their islands, moving the animals around and not on the keyboard and pressing keys they didn't need to press etc). I tried to get the children to think about what order the animals should come in and what they should do. Looking back, it would have been good to have talked to the class about their animals and discussed how they move - perhaps even going through actions for each of them. This would have got them thinking a lot more about how they moved them on the screen. Although some of the children wanted to move their animals quickly and over big distances to begin with, they did pick up the idea quite quickly that they needed to move them in small amounts. This animation acitivity was just an added extra (bonus) for them in class but I think they enjoyed it and there's another three groups to work with this week!
When I returned to school following the workshop with Oscar, I told the Head and staff what I had learned from the day and showed them the software. The school has now invested in a 5 user license of I Can Animate and has 2 Hue Skype cameras and will be buying 3 more to match up with the machines that the software is installed on. I have just done a workshop for some of the staff at school to pass on the theoretical and practical knowledge I gained from the workshop (I have attached photos for you). During this session, they made some models and played around with the software (two of the films they made are also attached - very short also! Blu tac man and Blu tac man disappears). They also had a look at the Animation for Education toolkit I purchased after the workshop with Oscar. It certainly sparked conversation about how animation could be used within their classrooms and lessons and I'm sure the staff will continue to develop the knowledge they have gained so far.
My appologies if I have waffled but I thought I'd tell you as much as I could about what we've been doing at school since the workshop with Oscar. It is my last week at Grampound Road Village School this week before I leave for my placement school in Newquay in September. I am very keen to introduce animation to the children and staff there too if it is not already part of their activities.
I think an animation forum for teachers would be fantastic! I know I would find it valuable to bounce ideas around and gain advice and feedback. Input from animators like Oscar would also be extremely valuable.
Ryan Davies