I am once again on the road of experimentation — this time with StopMotion Animation. Every year, I do a claymation movie project with my sixth graders but to call it “claymation” is not quite accurate. They take single digital photos, add narration, and use MovieMaker to edit and produce short movies (in collaboration with second graders). Here is a link to last year’s collection of movies.
But this year, I want to try real stop-motion animation with them and my friend, Tonya, showed me some free software this summer at the National Writing Project’s Tech Matters seminar that I only now got around to downloading and checking out. (Here is a link to the wonderful site that has the software and a load of other resources for animation projects)
If I want my students to do something, I guess I better try it myself and figure it all out from the ground level (a mantra of mine — do it yourself! do it yourself! do it yourself!) So here is a character I created called Thelonius — he’s a puppet because I didn’t have any clay around the house and Thelonius is trying out a saxophone.
[googlevideo]3433337114668948227&hl=en[/googlevideo]
I hope to make a Thelonius clay figure and set him off on some small adventures with stopmotion animation.
Peace (with animation),
Kevin
PS — the music is by my old band, Big Daddy Kiljoy, and that’s me on the saxophone!