Wednesday 22 May 2013

Class2 Wednesday 22 May


Today is a fantastic day in Class2 ! We have started our animation project after Year 5 wrote our stories, Year 4 made our models and Year 3 made our backdrops.
We practised yesterday and watched some clips from Shaun the Sheep and Lego Star Wars to inspire us. It looked so easy but we are finding it tougher than we thought.
Dylan has acted as our class journalist and has obtained the following quotes:
"It is fun but a bit fiddly."
"It makes you resilient."
"It is a bit confusing and lots of hard work."

As well as learning about animation, we are having to learn how to use various types of software including IMovie and Animate It, together with having to save and export our clips regularly.

One of the things we are finding the hardest is putting the models into place, then moving the bodies gently and slowly in order to make them move on film. Animate it (the software) shows a shadow of where the model was before it was moved, which is helping a lot, but it is still tricky!

UPDATE: Thursday 23rd May
Today we watched the animations. We thought the year 3 backdrop were amazing. The films were brilliant but we were how short they were.It was a good experience! 
By Dylan












Monday 20 May 2013

Class 1 are busy working on animating the stories created for our Festival of Literacy. Following our training workshop last Friday, small groups are applying all they learnt last week. Working vertically in groups throughout the school, we have been busy using beautiful sets created by class 12 (year 3), the very professional clay models from class 9 (year 4) and the creative stories written by class 6 (year5). Collaborative learning at its best! Later we will be uploading the animations ready for editing in iMovie.



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Friday 17 May 2013

Preparations

It may be SATS week, but the excitement is mounting for the Festival of Literacy Animation Week.

Year 3 have been painting backdrops. The BIG question is: How BIG should the backdrop be? And will we be shooting against the painted scenery or against a green screen, with the scenery being added in later on the computer? Gosh, it's technical stuff.

Year 4 classrooms have acquired the distinctive smell of plasticene. The children have been working really hard all week making characters based on their design drawings. Some of the detail is amazing. They are having to work out how to make their models stand up, and how to make them strong enough to withstand a whole day of being manipulated for the films.

Year 5 have been showing their storyboards to Year 4. It is interesting to see how the characters and settings have been integrated into the stories. In some cases there have been interesting changes: most notably, the character of Mum who has strangely become a dinosaur. The model makers have cleverly used the storyboards to help them adapt their characters.

Year 6 worked with animator Wendy Griffiths and software maker Roger Young on Friday 17th, learning the principles of stop frame animation. Some of the children have experimented with this before, either in school or at home, but it was great to get some tips from the professionals. Now we are all set up and ready to go next week.