Animation

I've watched a few animated Plasticine films and wanted to have a go with my group.
The only problem was that our fine motor skills were not up to scratch for making intricate models.
Plasticine is very hard to start with but if you hold it in a warm hand it soon becomes soft and pliable.
Softening the plasticine became an important job proudly owned by members of the group.
We were all very pleased with our plasticine film and you can watch the film below

The film is complete!

I 've had a bit of trouble . My computer now uses Windows 7 and when I went to use Windows Movie maker it had gone. A google "whats happened to Movie maker?" revealed that I had to download it -which I did

Unfortunately its changed a bit. I couldn't get the frame speed to go under 1 second ! It took me several tries over a few weeks and another google "whats happened to Movie maker?" before I found out that to select the stop motion animation speed of 0.125 seconds per frame I had to type it in...problem solved and the film could be finished.
So below is our stop motion animation film : The Fisherman's tale

See my other blog entries on stop motion animation

Making a film

We have started a new stop motion animation film . Our first job was to develop a story line. This needed some skill development so I started the process by using individual cartoon pictures from Comix Strips


There is an online Comic strip maker but I printed off individual pictures from the printables section (staff scribed for the students) -They just had to come up with the ideas.







Our next step was to create our own comic strip.This would help the students understand the importance of a story.
Under the 'direction' of a Learning Assistant the students created a story in 5 simple photographs e.g students want to play some music, they all have different ideas- when the music comes on its too loud- It gets turned down and everyone is happy.... We then made a PowerPoint- (we collaborated by viewing the Power Point on a large screen) and added dialogue. We were all very pleased with the result. This week we started on creating a story board for our film.



I followed the hints given on Making Stop Motion Movies. The Story board section suggested a structure which begins with the elements of the story followed by character development and finally creating the story board.
To finish we watched a 10 minute film suggested by Making Stop Motion Movies
Frog and Toad Behind the scenes
Also see my other blog entries on animation.

Film making

As reported in a previous blog we are making films. My Monday group have just finished a stop motion movie using plasticine. Here is a good guide to making a stop motion movie.





The Oska Bright site

has some guidelines on making films suitable for sharing with adults with a learning disability



And an example of a film made using plasticine models here


The only thing I need to know now is how to add music to a stop motion film. When I drag it to the storyboard it plays at extra fast speed!

Animation

I am teaching photography and film at the moment to my students with learning disabilities.
We are exploring animation at the moment and we have made our first short films involving fish in fish bowls. We used Windows MovieMaker and a digital camera. It wasn't perfect.The tripod kept moving (now rectified with a sturdy tripod) and I could have done with viewing the blog entry:

Learn from and Create Animated Music Videos

from
Nik's Daily English Activities

especially the link to

Tutorial: Create a Stop-Motion Animation Movie using Digital Camera or WebCam

This gives clear directions on the frame speed to set and some tips on mounting the camera.