This area particularly appeals to me, because I am an extremely visual learner, to the point where lectures are an almost complete waste of my time unless there is an engaging visual component. I love drawing and design and as a child I enjoyed creating cartoons. Animation also appeals to my logical side (one of Garner's intelligences), as sequencing is very important. For someone like me, the ability to do it all on the computer is fantastic, and for kinaesthetic learners there are opportunities such as claymation and stop-motion video - even as simple as a teddy bear made with split pins to join the limbs.
We viewed many videos of animation in the lecture and in the workshop, we got a crash-course (somewhat literally, thanks to Internet Explorer) in having a go ourselves. Following is a summary of some of the tools we investigated today.
Build your Wild Self
This is actually quite fun. With Build Your Wild Self you start with a blank person and change all sorts of things about their features to create a wild creature. There are enough options to make the pictures look like a real person (including several skin colour options), however the real fun starts when you begin to add lemur tails, bat wings, frog arms and all manner of other options. There are probably billions of possible outcomes. I like the idea of students using this to create an avatar for social networking sites they use (in fact, I have used mine for the profile on this blog). At the end, it provides information about what each of the animal parts do, and the animal they come from. The site is maintained by the New York Zoos.
Xtranormal
In an odd twist of fate, this afternoon not 2 hours after leaving the workshop I received an invitation to a 40th birthday party next year, in Las Vegas, created using Xtranormal. Prior to today, I had never heard of this website. It's a pretty interesting concept - "if you can type, you can create movies". You simply type what the characters are going to say, and they even lip sync to the words. The technology is still young, and so the animation isn't quite there yet, but it's still pretty impressive. I would, however, expect the text-to-speech to be better given that this is fairly old technology now.
I'm just not quite sold on the suitability of their landing page for young children just yet, with featured movies such as Baby Mama Drama ("Hot, Unauthorised and Unapologetic"), Babes Behind Bars ("You can never be too rich or too thin... or too drunk"), and Zombies ("All you need is brains").
I took the time to sign up for a free account and create a movie, and I was pleasantly surprised. There were loads of options, many of them payable via a points system (you buy points with a credit card), but this really only applied to actors and sets. The options for voices, camera angles and character options could keep kids usefully engaged for hours. Loading times are quite slow though which could be an issue in classrooms. I did notice that there is a PC program you can use - as I have a Mac, I don't know how good it is.
This is called "How to get fired", and is an illustration of how kids could use it inappropriately. Enjoy.
This is me, really soon, Lego-style. I think this is a lovely website! You can create all manner of characters in Lego. Imagine the fun you could have making random figures then making stories out of them. I can imagine making a whole lot of these, printing and laminating them and having a tin that kids can draw a character out of when they're stuck for inspiration with their writing. You could also use them for drama activities.I used the "Classic Kid-Safe Mini-Mizer" - had a quick check and it seems to be much the same as the normal one but without such quality accessories as handcuffs, cat-o-nine-tails and guns.
As this site requires subscription for many of its features, it's hard to know exactly what's offered. There is a 14-day trial for schools, so it would be interesting to find out. It mainly consists of writing tools, which could be very useful. One interesting (and free) feature is the "Make and Do" section, that contains instructional videos of fun things like making parachutes, magic tricks and finger puppets. This could be a useful resource to show kids a good instructional video, so that they could go and make their own.
This site contains a "Story Maker" application where you can make your own videos with different chapters, characters, animations and sounds. You can also add your own pictures and sounds, which increases the functionality. It's a little bit fiddly, so would be more suitable for older (year 5/6) children.
The only limitation is that it didn't load at all in the uni computer labs, and was slow and buggy on my Mac at home. I don't know whether it's the site or the computers I've been using but it just doesn't seem to be quite there yet with stability - and therefore could be very frustrating to use in the classroom.
The only limitation is that it didn't load at all in the uni computer labs, and was slow and buggy on my Mac at home. I don't know whether it's the site or the computers I've been using but it just doesn't seem to be quite there yet with stability - and therefore could be very frustrating to use in the classroom.
Comic Life
I'm a Mac user and have had Comic Life for years. It's a wonderfully easy drag-and-drop interface where you can create comics using your own photos, then add all sorts of speech bubbles, headings and little "POW!" pictures. To be honest I haven't really used it much myself, because I prefer to draw rather than use photos. I notice it has now been released for Windows, which means I'll hopefully be able to use it in the classroom. To be honest, I'm starting to feel the same way about "Marker Felt" font as "Comic Sans MS" (ie: never use, ever, ever, ever, ever...) but I can see the fun application in schools. I'm not in an office anymore!!
Pivot and Stykz
Two free download programs which provide a wealth of opportunity in the classroom.
I first saw Pivot at school where the kids were using it to create scenes about Migration. Most of them chose to do refugee scenes as this was fresh in their mind, even though the teacher reminded them that the percentage of migrants to Australia who come as refugees is less than 7%. The girls are only in grade 6 but they managed to create some pretty amazing scenes in 45 minutes. They have used it before so they were familiar with the workings, but I was enthralled so I went home to download it - only to find that there's no Mac version. Sad face. There is, however, a program called "Stykz" which is like a pared-down Pivot, and has a Mac version. According to the Stykz website the upcoming version will integrate well with Pivot and provide many more features, but the upgrade has been promised for around a year now, so who knows when it will actually happen. The current "release candidate 4" works most of the time but errors do pop up quite often. It's probably not suited to the classroom in its current form.
With both programs, you start with a little stick figure. You can bend him in lots of different ways to find a starting point, then make small adjustments and freeze the frames. I think it needs around 10 frames a second to start looking like movement, so for a 10-second clip you'd need 100 frames. (Some of the kids' animations went for several minutes... I can only imagine how long that took them).
Below is one attempt from the first night I had Stykz:
There is also the ability to create custom objects, such as the bird above. A lot of the kids made cars, structures for the characters to run up and fall off, and all manner of different things. Using Pivot, you can import .jpg backgrounds which are easy for the kids to create in Paint and provide a well-rounded scene.
I can see many uses for this in the classroom, for example as above, a response to a big issue such as refugees. You could have the class illustrate scenes from a story, or even create stories from their animations.
I did have one idea, I don't have much of a basis for this but it's kind of a fledgling thought. Children who are on the Autism Spectrum often cannot read body language, and therefore struggle with many forms of communication with their peers. A program such as this where there are no faces, and no speech, could be a valuable tool in educating these children about what certain gestures and social conventions mean. Just a thought.
More...
There are loads more sites that offer animation and comic strip functionality, and here is a list of a few more...
Zimmer Twins - very simple movie maker for young children. Sign-up required.
Toondoo - create comic strips. Schools (kid-safe) version available.
KerPoof Studio - make animated story scenes
Pixton - create comics online
Bit Strips for Schools - comic strip creation, safe for schools.
I'm a Mac user and have had Comic Life for years. It's a wonderfully easy drag-and-drop interface where you can create comics using your own photos, then add all sorts of speech bubbles, headings and little "POW!" pictures. To be honest I haven't really used it much myself, because I prefer to draw rather than use photos. I notice it has now been released for Windows, which means I'll hopefully be able to use it in the classroom. To be honest, I'm starting to feel the same way about "Marker Felt" font as "Comic Sans MS" (ie: never use, ever, ever, ever, ever...) but I can see the fun application in schools. I'm not in an office anymore!!
Pivot and Stykz
Two free download programs which provide a wealth of opportunity in the classroom.
I first saw Pivot at school where the kids were using it to create scenes about Migration. Most of them chose to do refugee scenes as this was fresh in their mind, even though the teacher reminded them that the percentage of migrants to Australia who come as refugees is less than 7%. The girls are only in grade 6 but they managed to create some pretty amazing scenes in 45 minutes. They have used it before so they were familiar with the workings, but I was enthralled so I went home to download it - only to find that there's no Mac version. Sad face. There is, however, a program called "Stykz" which is like a pared-down Pivot, and has a Mac version. According to the Stykz website the upcoming version will integrate well with Pivot and provide many more features, but the upgrade has been promised for around a year now, so who knows when it will actually happen. The current "release candidate 4" works most of the time but errors do pop up quite often. It's probably not suited to the classroom in its current form.
With both programs, you start with a little stick figure. You can bend him in lots of different ways to find a starting point, then make small adjustments and freeze the frames. I think it needs around 10 frames a second to start looking like movement, so for a 10-second clip you'd need 100 frames. (Some of the kids' animations went for several minutes... I can only imagine how long that took them).
Below is one attempt from the first night I had Stykz:
As you can see, it doesn't take a lot of time to learn the program and get some meaningful results. This animation was created from 75 frames, I sat and did it while I was watching TV.
There is also the ability to create custom objects, such as the bird above. A lot of the kids made cars, structures for the characters to run up and fall off, and all manner of different things. Using Pivot, you can import .jpg backgrounds which are easy for the kids to create in Paint and provide a well-rounded scene.
I can see many uses for this in the classroom, for example as above, a response to a big issue such as refugees. You could have the class illustrate scenes from a story, or even create stories from their animations.
I did have one idea, I don't have much of a basis for this but it's kind of a fledgling thought. Children who are on the Autism Spectrum often cannot read body language, and therefore struggle with many forms of communication with their peers. A program such as this where there are no faces, and no speech, could be a valuable tool in educating these children about what certain gestures and social conventions mean. Just a thought.
More...
There are loads more sites that offer animation and comic strip functionality, and here is a list of a few more...
Zimmer Twins - very simple movie maker for young children. Sign-up required.
Toondoo - create comic strips. Schools (kid-safe) version available.
KerPoof Studio - make animated story scenes
Pixton - create comics online
Bit Strips for Schools - comic strip creation, safe for schools.
With the good also comes the bad. Below are the sites we were shown today that really didn't meet my quality standard.
Sketch Swap
I can't see any academic value in this website. Basically, you sketch something and press send, and then you receive a sketch someone else has done. It's sort of entertaining once or twice I suppose because you don't know what you'll get back (contributing to the lack of suitability for young children, of course). I find it kind of hard to believe also that the "live swaps" are all genuine, because I'm sure many people go to the site like me and draw something very basic, however every drawing that came back in the workshop today was intricate (example to right). Dvolver
Dvolver is a movie-making application that I feel would be particularly limiting in the classroom. First, it contains extremely inappropriate characters (eg. "Sexyy [sic] Woman"). Secondly, you are required to enter an email address before being given the code to embed on a website. I don't trust sites that ask children to enter email addresses. (Not only that, but my uni email address, which has never had any spam before, got its first spam a few hours after signing up... coincidence?) Thirdly, in the workshop nearly everyone's browser crashed while adding the movie to our blogs. Finally - the embedded video starts playing automatically when the website is loaded and cannot be paused or stopped - therefore it has been deleted from my blog! I will not be using this website again. I wonder whether perhaps the name indicates that it is in fact doing the opposite of evolving?
