Animation

We will be exploring still frame animation. The following is an awesome link that was discovered by a student I did animation with last term. I have never seen anything quite like it. I shudder to think how long it took to set up and do. Awesome grafitti artist though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4

Animation is a great way to engage people of all ages. We will be exploring still frame animation made with digital photographs. This is awesome, and I think that it has many applications in subjects such as science. However, the production of this type of animation can be time consuming and uses an awful lot of memory to produce, even if you downsize the images.

If you want to use animation as a form of exploration, art or drama type medium, I would prefer to use a form of vector animation where the file sizes are very small.

This is a web site that I just created a little animation on in about 5 mins. It free and would be great for developing little stick figure animations. These could explore, characterization, narrative, perspective, all sorts of things. They take up no memory and are easy to produce. If you can use microsoft paint, you can use this.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ywhnhmimnmx

The link above is to my Animation assessment project from last term. This animation was designed and constructed by me as an example of how animation can be used to assist in the teaching of reading skills. The original plans where to include a voice over as well so the animation could be played with or without a story teller. Flash also gives you the option to make things interactive as the button on the first screen does. Flash animations have great potential and could even be designed as a pick your own adventure storytelling tool. Flash is quite complex to use but I am sure that simpler versions fo this type of thing can be done using a program like movie maker.