Animated Name Tag Lesson Plan Print E-mail
Lesson Plans - Animation Lesson Plans
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Wednesday, 08 February 2012 00:00
The following lesson is a great activity to reinforce animation skills and introduce students to stop-motion and operating a digital camera, without a whole lot of labor up front for students. The simplest interpretations of this project can be letters cut from construction paper dancing across the screen, though I've had students really push the boundaries and come up with some pretty, complex outcomes, too.
 

Learning Objective:

Students will make a short, stop-motion animated movie that displays their name.  

Prerequisites:

Before presenting this lesson, consider showing Episode 4 Season 2: Animation is an Optical Illusion to your students.  Also, teaching them to make a Flip-O-Rama or a Zoetrope are great ways to introduce the concepts of animation that will be reinforced in this lesson.
 

Essential Questions:

What is the process of creating an animation from still images?
How does one properly use a digital camera to produce a great image?
 

Resources:

 

Materials:

Digital Cameras (we used the Cannon Powershot A480 for these examples)
Monopods or Tripods (we used Sharpics SPMP16 Tabletop Monopod, but I am looking at other options in the future.)
A computer with video editing software installed (we used Adobe Premiere Elements 8.0)
drawing paper
markers or colored pencils
magazines or other materials for collage 
manilla envelopes (to hold letters as they are cut out)
 

Learning Activities:

I strongly encourage you to make your own example to see what kind of pitfalls your students may come across as they are making their animations.  Once you have an example, show these to your students along with some of the examples found on this site.
 
Tell students that they will be making an animated name tag and model how to cut out letters from colored paper.  Some students may want to find letters from magazines for a "Ransom Note" look.  This is also a great adaption for younger students who may struggle to visualize how to cut out letters.
 
Here's a few of the tips I give my students before I cut them loose:
 
Make sure there is enough contrast between the letters and the background so viewers can read the text easily.
 
Right:
 
Wrong:
 
Utilize the whole frame when making their movies. The example below shows what not to do. The letters are at the bottom of the frame.
 
Make sure to take enough pictures and move the letters a small amount each time, so that motion appears to be smooth. If you take too few pictures or move the letters to drastically, it can make the movie appear choppy and disjointed.
 
Right:
 
Wrong:
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Last Updated on Saturday, 04 February 2012 15:22