Animation ideas for early years

I love this simple animation example, made yesterday with teachers in Plymouth. Focused ideas result in watchable outcomes. The small group of KS 1 teachers knew the story of The Rainbow Fish very well and had the confidence to make their own adaptation.

Rainbow Fish is a great story to adapt and bring to life with animation. Simple, visual and short.

The workshop was one of about fifteen courses happening in the South West, organised by the SWGFL.



Another group of teachers on the same course went for a more random approach.

MFL's get animated

On Tuesday 24th I ran an animation INSET day with twenty MFL teachers from both Primary and Secondary schools in Salisbury. In groups of five the teachers created four fun animation shorts focused on foreign language projects and ideas, retelling popular stories in French, and creating a surreal Spanish myth featuring a Bull in Love with a flower, who fancied a cow!

The films below demonstate how a clear and foucused story can be created in just a few hours. There was a lot of laughter during the day and much fun was had by all.

The idea of using the animation clips in class without any sound was discussed towards the end of the day, as a fun way to encourage students to write their own short scripts in French or Spanish. These scripts would then be added to the animations with a microphone and video editing package like iMovie or Movie Maker.

I think this idea has loads of potential and will have a go, next week at the CiLT conference in Liverpool.

Enjoy the films.

Make IT Happy

This look's like a great opportunity for creating a fun animated short or video project.

Make IT Happy (click on the link) 

There's prize money! Fame! And will be lots of fun!

Good luck.

Animation with gang members in Bristol

At last this project has started and it's going very well.  We have two interviews with recent victims of gang related crime and two interviews with local community police officers. 

The young people involved have had a day of animation with me, making models, thinking up a short scenario and working with a green screen, the results can be seen here. This was to give them an idea of the process and principles of animation as well as introduce them to the ideas of the project. They all did brilliantly and so far no one has got uncomfortable with the theme of understanding the emotions and feelings of others when they've become a victim of crime often within their own home.

The five young people involved listened to the interviews last week, there was a surprisingly quiet moment of reflection for the small group as they listened to the lady talk about her house and car being targeted by a small gang of youths. She sounds like a lovely lady!

So the group decided that as she was talking about her home and feeling like a prisoner in it, while the gang targeted her, she should be a tortoise! Pictured below.

Another small group decided the community police officers being interviewed should be penguins again pictured below. 

Next week we will start to film the characters, animating to the words of the interviews.