I Love Animation
I love watching it and I especially love making animations. Some of the coolest people I know are animators. I have enjoyed sharing this enthusiasm with others for many years. iPads add a twist to the process with a new set of tools and great portability. I recently did an animation workshop for elementary age kids using FlipBoomCartoon. Now I have a chance to offer this same opportunity to my students at Lynchburg College.
What Tools Will We Use?
My Drawing 1 students will be using iPads next week. This is a first for me to be able to offer beginning drawing students access to art making tools on an iPad. The college just got 30 iPads last semester. They will be using FlipBoomCartoon to make animations and Procreate for drawing. If we have time, I'd like to see them bring gesture drawings from Procreate into iMovie to create an animation of stills.
Why iPads now?
It's partly a scheduling issue in terms of availability but it's also a good time in the progression of the course. Since the beginning of the semester we have been focused on working exclusively with line; contour line, hatching and cross hatching. LIne is a basic component of animation and a great jumping off point.
I decided to prepare the students by asking them to make a flip book for a homework assignment. Didn't everyone make a flip book in elementary school? I hope so. Flipbooks will remind them of the basic tenet of time based media...images changing over time. Little changes add up to telling stories.
I suggested they work on 3 inch square post-it note pads because they are very convenient, a good size to not be overwhelmed with drawing and readily available.
I shall see next Tuesday how successful they are with this assignment.
Flip Books on Steroids
In the course of looking for inspiration for my students, I found some amazing examples of the humble flip book to share with them. This first on is actually done for the Post-It company and it's very impressive in scope.
This one is very cool too, much more advanced that I expect to see from my students next week, but why not show them really exciting work to inspire some original concepts and hopefully get them to invest the time to come up with something interesting.
I had not seen a mechanical flip book device before I found this beautiful work of artist J. Be sure to watch both of these and even check out his Vimeo channel.
Colibri from Juan Fontanive on Vimeo.
How About You?
How have you introduced your students to making animation on an iPad? What tools do you use?
Kristin Reiber Harris is an artist/animator/media developer with a focus on educational media for young children. Duck Takes A Ride:An Art Story and ABC.DC:An Art Alphabet are available in the App Store. Her website is KristinHarrisDesign.com.
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