Hi, I teach 6th grade in Oregon. One of my students brought in a digital camera movie he made that was totally awesome! A bunch of other students became totally enthralled with it also.
I have access to: 5 digital cameras, 3 Tripods, various materials to build stuff and 3 laptop computers.
I can buy animation programs for the school to help out my venture also.
So, if anyone has some advice, i was thinking of doing stop-motion animation to start out with... build sets, take pics then get em on the computer and use some program like Windows Movie Maker or whatever....
That actually sounds very fun, only if my teachers were as cool as you.
Animation writer who loves...Animation!
I've toyed with this product:
http://www.stopmotionpro.com/school_1.htm
It's fairly inexpensive ($145 for a school) - and fit all my needs for stop motion. Check it out and let me know what you think, they have a free trial download you can play with. Good luck, and have fun!
I will play around with that this weekend. Thank you very much for your information and the link!:cool:
Yes we use Stop Motion Pro at the school where I work and it is so user-friendly. To get the most out of it, your cameras should preferably be Canon cameras because they use Stop Motion Pro's Onion Skinning feature which gives you visual feedback of what you are animating. You can also use a DVcam or web cam with this feature. You must also try out the timelaspe feature, it's fantastic!
Another program you may want to try out is Monkey Jam, it's a free line tester that can be used for stop motion animation.
Biggest issues I run into when working with the pupils are keeping the camera in the same place when shooting, if it moves it looks there has been an earthquake! Animation timing is important and initially it's hard for the students not to shoot each action frame after frame, rather than capturing an action for for four to six frames before moving on to the next. This doesn't apply to fast actions, of course.
Good luck with it, stop-motion is a great introduction to animation.
Claire.
Visit my website:
Claire O'Brien.com
Thank you Claire will look at that stuff also and look into what this "onion skinning" feature is, thx again! great info!:cool:
Onion Skinning allows you to see a faint ghost image of previous frame that you shot mixed with a live feed from the camera. This helps you to see where you want to place the model/puppet for the next frame.
Visit my website:
Claire O'Brien.com