IMotion is an app that takes a series of individual photographs of objects and puts them together to make an short video.
Why IMotion?
In this day and age, it becomes more and more difficult to keep our students engaged in the learning process. Technology has dramatically changed the way we look at and learn about art. Our students have grown up in the age of technology and are often more comfortable using devices than we are, however this is a skill set that we should take advantage of as often as possible to keep our students interested and excited about the art making process. Such was the case when I considered trying stop frame animation with my 6th graders, but as is often the case, they went above and beyond my expectations!
What is stop frame animation?
According to Wikipedia, "stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as continuous sequence."
Planning
It is a good idea to begin the lesson by showing students several examples of stop frame animation. YOUTube is a great resource. Students began planning their animation by coming up with a story board to show their ideas. They also began making a list of materials they would need to complete their project. You may choose to separate students groups into different jobs such as director, animator, photographer, and so on, however I like my students to have a chance to do numerous jobs, so I let my student groups work that out.
Stop motion begins and ends with Peter Gabriel
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Here's a video from the musical group "ok go" using stop motion |
SETH GREEN'S
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kid examples with claymation
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Cobb County's Amy Morris using IMotion HD to wrap up lessons
Other examples of stop motion movies
Before you start with your class,
Pre-write and story board
Designing sets:
The next step in the process is to design the sets or their animation. Cereal and Copy paper boxes make great sets. Of course, you'll also have students that will choose to use a particular area of the classroom for their backdrop. You can also use a green screen background and have your setting be anything. However, don't lose sight of the forest for the trees and spend too much in the set creation stage.
Movie Making Process
Title Frames:
Regardless whether or not the kids are working by themselves or in a group, include a title frame animation. It can be drawn, created digitally or can be it's very own IMotion movie by itself. It is a good idea to collect various types of letters such as magnetic plastic letters, craft foam letters, alphabet pasta, etc... Faces IMake is another option that will allow you to create screen shots as you add stuff to your collage. Creating an IMovie for the title screen can serve as excellent practice for the rest of their movie and gets them familiar with the IMotion App.
IMovie/Splice
Once the students have collected all their clips for their animation, it is time to import them into IMovie or some other video editing app/program for final editing and compilation. IMovie for the IPad is also a fairly self explanatory app with too many components to list here. IMovie was free this summer and then of course was back up to $4.99 once school started. There are numerous websites, videos, and basic steps required to complete your movie. Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere and AutoDesk's Smoke (free) are all great, but do have memory requirements.
AUDIO
Silent movie popularity ended a long ago, minus 2011's The Artist...A good flick you should check it out. But I digress, There are many apps available including IMovie (check the recommended app page) and webpages like Vocaroo (thanks Gina Trickett at Bellmont Hills Elementary for the suggestion) that will record audio. You can add background theme music, various sound effects, etc.... or students can record their own voice and sound effects. I've used youtubedowloader.com
Credits
Don't forget to give credit where credit is due. At the end of your movie, remember to include the stars, the writer, director, videographer, editor, and special acknowledgements.
Rendering
Rendering is the process of fusing images and video clips together to form one condensed mp.4 and is necessary in order to upload to video sharing webpages.
sharing
You can use any file sharing webpage. I normally use Vimeo, but Youtube and Google docs are great options as well. The great thing about these three options that they offer you the ability to make your videos private and then share privately or better yet...Make a movie flyer and then tag it with Aurasma and play your video.
What can you use in your movie?
ClayMation
Not on the IPad, but Cool things your kids can use for the movie
I've listed a webpages that gives some pretty awesome paper construction characters that your students can use in the movie.
Toy-a-DaySo much win on this site, many different characters to print out and use.
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Avenger PiecesSimilar to Toy-a-Day and the Foldify apps, but this webpage's main focus is marvel comic book heroes.
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starwarigamiIf it was in a Star Wars movie, you can make it. Origami Yoda watch out!
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Kyle HiltonKyle Hilton has done some wonderful paper dolls, including POP culture, movie and tv stars.
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