Go Animate

I recently came across this really good site for animation – well worth taking a look at this as it makes the creation of animations a simple task for pupils.

“GoAnimate.com is an entertainment website that enables the simple creation of unique computer animated stories, satires and sentiments that can be shared with the entire online community. The site offers simple to more advanced innovative features that provide users with a multitude of possibilities for customizing their animations. We will constantly be enhancing and adding features, popular licenses and animations from well known comedians, animators and writers.
Historically, the creation of animation required specific skills, limiting those who can express their creativity. We designed the Go!Animate application to allow users to create animations without drawing talent or a technical understanding of advanced software such as Flash. The site provides users with a library of interesting characters, backgrounds, props, sound effects and music for use in creating their own unique animations. Creators can customize their animations with a number of tools and features that allow them to create truly unique works of expression. “

taken from their website – http://goanimate.com/go/

Lego Digital Designer

Lego Digital Designer is a great free download that enables you to build lego models virtually and then animate them. You can find the free program here – http://ldd.lego.com/

The program is very easy to install and you will be up and running in just a few minutes. You build models by dragging and dropping the bricks onto the base board pictured below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A camera lets you view your construction from any angle and you can animate finished models. The latest version of the software enables;

Improved building experience

Quicker selection of bricks

Easier to connect bricks when building

New brick palette tool for easy use

More Bricks in the palette

Partly built models for easy start up

New backgrounds for model view

Support for the Market Street and the Hobby Train box

Improved virtual building guide generator

Alice for Schools

If you have not already seen this it is worth thinking about downloading the software and having a go!
Manchester University have designed some 3D animation software for use by pupils. There are 2 programs available for download, one for primary and one for secondary pupils (probably worth looking at both because some primary pupils will be able to use the secondary software). The University is also running a competition but this is not a requirement of downloading the software.
You can download the software and 3D object here;

http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/Digital60/Digital60-AliceCompetition/about-competition/faq.php

text below taken from the website.

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.Alice 2.0 is designed for high school and college students.Storytelling Alice is designed for younger students. Storytelling Alice was created by Caitlin Kelleher as part of her doctoral work in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Generally speaking, the characters have a wider range of behaviours/emotions than those in Alice 2.0, that might be useful as part of a story. Although the developers state that Alice 2.0 and Storytelling Alice are designed for particular age groups, it does not really matter which version is used by which age group. It would probably be wise to try both to see which one would be most useful for a particular animation.

Following the family tradition

My son recently graduated from uni with a first in computing. He has spent the final year at uni at home, only travelling in on days when he had lectures. In his days away from uni he has worked at my old school as a classroom assistant and “dinner lady”. This will undoubtedly stand him in good stead for his PGCE course next September. He has been supporting animation with pupils in year 2. He has set up a mini-website so that the animations can be viewed by a wider audience. View the animations here,

Robin Hood School year 2 animations

The children storyboarded their animations and filmed the sequences in small groups. They did the voice overs themselves and were supported in adding background music. The final outcomes were pretty pleasing!

Some free tools

On-line Video Editing

There are several programs that enable you to edit video on-line. This means that you do not have to buy expensive software to get pretty good results. This has particular relevance when you are away from your own computer, on a field trip with pupils fro example. You can upload your video directly to the internet and do a professional editing job quickly. The best two that I have come across are Eyespot and Jumpcut.

Eyespot

Eyespot is an easy to use yet sophisticated on-line video editing suite. Uploading your video is simple (up to 100mb limit for any one file) and you can even upload stills and music/audio. You can drag and drop clips to re-order them, you can apply transitions and apply a series of effects, like colour washes!. finally you can apply titles and credits. I have used this and it really is very straightforward.

Jumpcut

Jumpcut  is very similar to Eyespot. It has more transitions and effects to apply but is not as intuitive to use. It has the added advantage of being able to import directly from Flickr or facebook. if you were going to look at only one then i would suggest Eyespot, but if you have some experience of video editing then the extra range of effects might mean this is the on-line tool for you.

Make Internet TV

Came across a really good website called Make Internet TV . This is an excellent site that takes you through the whole process of shooting, editing, uploading and sharing video. It is easy to follow, aimed at the beginner and uses non technical language wherever possible. Even if you have no desire to upload video to the internet the step by step tutorials for Windows Movie Maker (on every Windows PC) are well worth looking at. If you are a Mac user there are tutorials on how to use Imovie.

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We have been running courses in animation and film making for pupils and teachers for several years. Here are our top tips for better animating. If you are interested in us coming to your school email us or visit this web site.

This animation was produced by Year 6 pupils at Robin Hood School art academy.

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See the work of Oscar Stringer, professional film maker and animator.

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