Animation Weekend Update

This weekend a group of 17 students from different schools involved in the PiE project have been making animated films in French and German. We started on Friday afternoon with some preparation activities. The students were introduced to the concept of animation through examples and discussion. We saw previous animated films which have been created on other PiE activities including our summer schools in 2004 and 2005. The students then started working on their plots and scripts.

An early rise on Saturday meant that we were able to get straight into the animation itself. Even before breakfast some of the students were working on their sets. The students have worked in three groups: we have an animal version of Star Academy, a report live from a celebrity party attended by Barbie, among others, and a Bob the Builder multilingual love story! We've been used to animating in the past with plasticine, and using toys has been quite a challenge in some ways. The biggest challenge seems to have been making Barbie stand up! This was solved by creating "concrete boots" out of plasticine!

Today we're adding the voiceovers and refining the movies. The animated sequences were created on a laptop using Boinx Software's iStopMotion and then imported into iMovie for adding voiceovers and titles. Later today we'll all watch the completed movies.

It's been a great weekend - there are a few more photos on the official PiE site - and we think the students have had a great time. They've worked together extremely well throughout the weekend.

Comments

[Mark]

Nice wee article on the Boinx weblog featuring our animation weekend! And thanks to the guys at Boinx for the congratulations re iTunes!