Animation broadcast for Glow

On Friday I flew to Glasgow to work with P5 and P6's at Highdykes Primary School in Dumbarton. The animation demonstration broadcast was for Glow, part of Learning and Teaching Scotland. 

It was a small experienced group of four animators, who had been studying a poem called Tam O"Shanter by Robert Burns. This year is his 250 birthday, so he's well established as a poet! And as part of Scotland's home coming celebrations, LTS wanted to use Glow to broadcast to schools all over Scotland two simple animation sessions for students and teachers to watch and follow.

The 90 minute animation session was filmed using 3 cameras and a feed from my laptop and broadcast live via Glow to schools all over Scotland.

Students and teachers could watch and follow the animated activity as well as ask questions via Glow.

We chose a short extract from the poem and made the models and set before the broadcast begun.

Below is the animation made by the students in Just 90 minutes while being filmed live!

Animation with art teachers

A few animations made at Eagle House school this week during an animation INSET day for art teachers. They made their models so quickly! And they were all excellent, notice the simple scenery in the films, again made extremely fast, with paper, chalk and blue tac.

The scenery doesn't need to be great, just enough to give us a sense of location. So don't spend ages on fantastic designs and art work, invest that time in creating engaging stories.

This first film I like lots, simple and easy to follow, visual story telling. We just ran out of time to add more sound effects. The more sounds the better. The scenery here is made from a card board box with, maker pens.

In this film, there is a lot of copy and pasting of the frames. Which is a great trick to make a scene last a little longer.

The simple back ground in this short, makes it easy to follow the action.

Animation with year 1 at Mayflower Primary, Tower Hamlets

Two shorts films based on the same story created by year one students at the Mayflower Primary School, in East London yesterday.

The year 1 students have been working with artist Maria Amidu since the beginning of term on the topic of Toys. This has included a trip to a museum, a toy shop (Hamleys) creating their own toys with Shrinkles and papier mache, drawing maps of their adventures with a beginning, middle and end. Reading stories about a naughty bus and other toys and creating their own original story based on all their discoveries.

This story was then turned into two animation shorts, we used all the art work that had been created, busses and robots, their story map was used as the back drop.

Enjoy.

Animation with Reception (Early Years)

This was a day I was slightly dreading, animation with 4 and 5 year olds. But it was great fun, animating fuzzy felt, on the farm fuzzy felt, so didn't have to make models, was straight out the box animation. I worked with small groups at a time, four or five, there were times when some of them did it on their own, moving the farmer and then taking the required shots, counting together as the did, as a team. I worked with the groups for about 20-30 mins at a time.

We created short scenes, then added them together in iMovie and using a USB Mic on a Hue web cam we added our short script.

The animation day was held at Church View Primary School in East Barnet, London. The first of three days, introducing animation into different Key stages, with a focus on literacy, encoraging students to plan a story, write a script, acting out their script using iMovie and a Mic and then sharing their finished work.

According to the Reception class teacher the students had to watch their film about 20 times before they got bored!

So if you're planning on animating with reception you can't go wrong with fuzzy felt!

Sue Baylik From East Barnet LA, arranged my visits and observed the days, below are some of her thoughts on the various outcomes.

Visiting Oscar’s Animation Workshops in Barnet

When I visited and observed a series of animation workshops run by Oscar, I felt that what I was watching was what education is all about. Oscar worked with a YR class, Y6 class and a Y8 class.

The first obvious element present was enjoyment. Throughout the days, the learners were smiling and laughing while working happily alongside each other. There was no difficult behaviour to manage in any of the classes.

Leading on from this, was their ability to cooperate and support each other. One teacher spoke about how pleased she was as the class did not always work in this way. Also, at the end of the session, the learners were eager to look at the films of the other groups and were positive and enthusiastic about their colleagues’ efforts. Animated(!) discussion not argument was the order of the day. Some learners did have to be ‘helped’ not to be camera, animator and computer person all at the same time, but by the end all the groups were working well together. It was interesting to observe the dynamics of the very successful, focused groups and those who needed more TLC.

Animated poems

This is one of five short animated poems made by year 10 students at Bishops Candellor School in Birmingham.

The poem is short, making it ideal for animating and adapting in a day, also it's very visual and the students made great use of sound to help the narrative. In fact the sound is crucial to this idea working.

A mix of fun shorts made by year 11 students.

I love these short animations for their inventiveness and simplicity. They were made in only four hours!

The students were taking part in a creative day to de-stress before their exams.

Enjoy

Animation in Cornwall-Mixed media

The first animation, made by teachers in Cornwall is a great example of mixing up your media.

Fuzzy felt is great fun and instant, good for KS 1 and early years. Very easy for them to animate.

These films are fresh from the Cornish coast, made yesterday. Enjoy, great models and fun simple stories.