Stop Motion Animation

My blog post titles have been pretty lame today and I apologize.  Usually I would come up with something witty or with a fitting pun, but I am just so behind on posting that I am just saying it how it is today...

Anyways... now that Summer is here, I have been trying to come up with a project a day for the kids.  It can be a craft, baking, library time, a science experiment, a new game of some sort like a new kind of tag, etc.  The other day, I had the brilliant idea that I would teach them about stop motion animation.

I gave them each a large piece of cardboard and told them to paint some scenery for their production.

Tanner and Ashlyn decided to go big and work together.

They painted a rain forest/ jungle type scene.

Charlotte tells us that hers is a volcano that exploded.

And Ian also went the volcano route.

When the scenery was dry, we scooted my entry table against a wall, set the scenery in a cookie sheet and leaned it up against the wall.  We added rocks, dirt, and plant life to give it more depth.

We brought in a lamp, took off the shade and leaned it close to the scene to give it some lighting.

The kids came up with some story lines and envisioned how they would tell their stories.

I would take a picture of a shot, the kids would move the animals a tiny bit and then I would take another picture.  This continued on until about 80 pictures were taken.  We took the pictures over to the computer and put them in a slide show on Windows Movie Maker, added some music and voila! Our two minute masterpiece was created.

You can watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqIYE3mKzrU

I would love to revisit this topic again sometime this summer with still motion drawing animations, or with playdough.  We had a lot of fun with this!