The Recipe for animating

It doesn't take long before a child understands how a animation is made picture after picture is taken and the figures are mowed we try to get no hands showing in the finished animation and if by mistake one picture has hands in it we take it away when we edit the animation.



The pictures taken. The children that made this animation gave it the name Shark Story.

Pictures taken in Japan and sound made in Finland.

That an animation is made of pictures is clarified by looking at flipbooks and simple paper around a pen a two picture animation.

 



Characters and backgrounds

Animating has got to the stage where children prepare characters and backgrounds.

 

Character





Making background





Ready background

The story is continuing to unfold while making the backgrounds and characters and sometimes it is just fun to move characters under the camera and watch the movement on the computer screen.

   



Age limits fore movies and games

The same thing is time after time discussed with children and sometime I get to wonder why parents put their children in harm’s way when they don’t follow the age limits on games and movies. Over and over this needs to be discussed with children and their parents. It’s a responsibility for parents to control what their children are doing and this also applies to the age limits of movies and games. Children compete who has seen ore played R rated (18) movies ore games. Studies show it is bad for a child’s development to watch what is not meant for their age. Please don’t be passive be active in fostering your children.

About age restrictions in Finland (Finnish)

We inform about age limits with a little screen where parents come in with their children to kindergarten and a leaflet to take home.



The story is unfolding

The story starts at a kindergarten where children is at morning gathering and the day takes a strange turn and no one knows where it will end. In animating the imagination sets the limits, When introducing animating I give the story a start and the animating children do the rest and make the journey fun while animating and sometimes when they get going it’s hard to stop. 

Storyboard

 Not yet ready background

The children are at the age of 5 and 6 and critical with the result, first thoughts how do you make the hands disappear. When they tried to move and click move and click move and click they understand how it’s done they comment if there by mistake are hands showing in the animation. Sometimes I delete the pictures that shows hands and sometime I leave them in the animation as an evidence of the process making animations.

Today the discussion at breakfast handled the amount of televisions they have at home at most three but many had one or two.

New Animators

We needed to start over we now have a old computer but new fore us to animate with, I have used my own until now but do to the hard use lots of animating and rendering it took a dive and is no more. Getting a new group of children to animate was easy, as always they got inspired and some short animations were made. Soon some will be published here on this blog.

Animation studio

I appreciate the interest in what we do and hope it inspire someone to take a step towards this way of working with children.