Simple Animations

Why Animate

Kids remain motivated

Its an easy way to use technology that is more than typing stories, and searching the internet

Its easy to do

ANIMATIONS

THE SHORT COURSE

Take pictures

Open your video editing software

Add the pictures to your video software

Shorten the picture duration of each still photo to less than half a second

Add music

Add titles and credits

Save and share!

EXAMPLES

ANOTHER EXAMPLE

Ideas…

Let your imagination be your guide, but here are a few things I have thought of.

Language Arts

Create a scene from a story or novel.

Write a story that can be animated.

Math:

Animate the solution to a math problem

Science:

Exploding volcano

Stages of plant growth

Tectonic Plates / Pangea

Solar System

Social Studies

The Seasons / Earths Axis

Re-create a scene from History

Arts Education

Creating Models to Animate

Use various styles of background music to see how Mood can be altered.

Physical Education

Animate a specific "play" from a sport (ie: how to execute a full court press)

Health

Hmmm....

Stuff you need…

Something to Animate. ( Plastecine, toys, people, drawings, any object large or small)

A background!

Digital camera

Tripod ( Not optional)

Computer

Video editing Software ( We will be using Microsoft Movie Maker that comes free with Windows XP)

Open the Program Microsoft Movie Maker

Once Movie Maker has started, select IMPORT PICTURES

Browse to the folder where you have saved your digital pictures. Select the first picture by clicking on it. Use CTRL + A to multiple select the remaining pictures. Select IMPORT . This will load ALL of your pictures into the Movie Maker Program

Before you put the pictures in motion, you must set the "frame rate". In other words you are setting how long each picture is going to be seen on the screen. To do this select TOOLS , then OPTIONS

Select the ADVANCED TAB

Reduce the picture duration to less than .500 of a second. At a picture duration of 0.125, the "frame rate will be 8 frames (or pictures) per second. If you wish for the "characters" to move slower increase the duration to .250, which will give you a frame rate of 4 pictures per second.

Select the first picture in Movie Maker by clicking on it. Use CNTRL + A to multiple select the rest of the pictures.

Place your mouse on one of the pictures and DRAG them to the Storyboard near the bottom of the screen. This may take a few minutes of "thinking time" for the computer. You can preview the animation by pressing PLAY on the Media Player, however most of the time the animations are extremely "jumpy” and hard to watch in preview mode! You will probably not like the results at this point, particularly if you ignored the suggestion of lowering the camera’s resolution!

Browse your computer to find the music or sound effect that you want. Select Import

You can add Music and sound effect in a fairly similar way to adding the pictures. Select Import Audio or Music

To insert the music you must select Show Timeline located just above the story board.

Drag the audio to the timeline where you want the music to begin

You can "shorten" the audio to match the length of the video by moving the blue "SLIDER" to the end of the video, then "split the clip" using the splitter. Select the part of the clip that extends beyond the pictures and press DELETE on your keyboard.

To add Titles and Credits, select the down arrow beside Edit Movie

Select Make Titles and Credits

Make your choices of Menu’s and Styles Repeat the same process for adding credits at the end of the movie and on selected clips

In order for the all parts of your animation to be tied together for viewing you must "produce it" by saving it in a recognized file format. Select save to My Computer or a Network drive and name your file.

There are many different file formats that you can produce your animation as depending on the audience!. For viewing on a high speed internet connection you can Video for Broadband (512kbps) If you only plan to view it on your own computer choose Best Quality Playback on my computer.

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