A Feature Article on Our Work

Recently we were approached by the people at iStopMotion about the ways in which we use the program with our students.   We responded and shared our 7th grade animation project with them as well as our YouTube Playlist of Best Animations from last year's DVA.

We are very honoured that they chose to write an article about our work and would like to take this opportunity to share it with the community.

Please click here to read the article.

You can watch some of our student videos below.

Our New Animation Stations-Part One!

We decided last school year that our current tripod, nootle and ipad combination for shooting animation footage were just not working out.

It was then that we discovered the G7 Pro iPad Tripod. It turns out it was the best choice we could have made.


Today, while the new animation workspace was being painted chromakey green, we moved the students out of the studio and set them up with their G7s and iPads.  They had a wonderful time as they worked at provisional stations, filming the initial animation sequences for the stories they had written.

Both teachers and students were thrilled with the flexibility and sturdiness of the G7s. This  combined with the use of iStopMotion and Green Screen by DoInk has really helped us to streamline the animation process and keep frustration levels low.  Having a more stable setup this time around will pay off nicely in the end, as student productions will be much smoother than they have been in the past.

7th Grade Animations

7A and 7C have successfully completed their digital animation work for the year. They created their animations using digital cameras and tripods, webcams, and iPads. They were given the choice of  using the following techniques: Pixilation, Stop Motion, Paper Puppets and drawing.

Toki Line test, iStopMotion and Animation Desk were used to produce the animation footage, once the storyboarding was done. The videos were edited on iMovie on the iMacs.  They had a lot of fun working with new applications and and trying things out with the different techniques. They also got a chance to reinforce previous chromakey work using the green  and blue screens. Have a look at some of their finished videos.

Favourite iPad Animation Apps

This is a guest post by my colleague, Rodrigo Alfaro, based on our animation work with iPads this school year.




We recently purchased a dozen iPads for teacher and student use in the LRC. These iPads are used for many tasks, including animation. We have found a great many useful apps for animation which we hope others will find useful as well.

  Animation Desk Lite for iPad This app has the most features for classical (drawn) animation. Its greatest limitation is that you can only create three scenes in the Lite version. Even so, it is quite a robust application; it includes different pen and brush types, multiple layers of animation, variable frame rates, onion-skinning and even a digital stamp tool which allows you to cut and paste as well. This application is ideal for patient students who have a drawing vocation and enough passion to pursue the completion of one project for a period of time. This application also feels more intuitive if you use a stylus to draw. Animation Desk will allow you to save a scene to the Photo Library (Camera Roll) as a movie, which can then be emailed or exported to a computer with the USB cable.

iStopMotion 
This application is designed for pixilation (sequential picture) sequences. The interface is very simple to use and understand, because as soon as you open the program there is a small tutorial which guides you through the basic functions of the app. When a clip is created, the front or back camera is activated and you can start shooting right away. The tricky part is to keep the ipad as still as possible, so the animation is not jarring and inconsistent. Often times, the best method involves placing the iPad in a static position in front of where the action will take place. Since this is a purchased app, there is no limit to the amount of scenes available to shoot. You also have the option to play back the animation at different speeds. When your sequence is done, you can export to the Photo Library and email your movie from there.

Animation Express
 This application is simple to use. It is very similar in style to Animation Desk, but the interface is less complicated. Even so, it is powerful enough to be able to do rotoscoping (drawing on pictures). It includes 2 modes: the regular drawing mode (which includes, brushes, colour swatches, a stamp tool and a smudge tool), as well as the animating mode, (which includes adding, subtracting or duplicating frames, variable frame rate, a sound recorder and export functionality to get your video out of the ipad and unto a computer. Other features (with the free version) include a shape tool, a Paint Bucket tool which is used to paint large areas of your drawing. This program is accessible and simple enough for those who find Animation Desk too complicated.