Starting Animation: Tasks for Students

All you need to try your hand at animation is some paper, a pencil and lots of imagination!

Changing shapes

To be a good animator, you need to think about how shapes can change and move. To start with, try these simple shape changing activities:

• Write down the letters of the alphabet
• Write down the letters of the alphabet back to front
• Write down the letters of the alphabet upside down
• Try putting the letters on their sides

Mirror Images

Choose a letter from the alphabet and write it down on a piece of paper making it quite large. With a small mirror in one hand hold the piece of paper in the other so that you can see the original letter and its mirror image. The reflection of the letter in the mirror will often make a picture. By moving the mirror, some letters look as though they have wings. Moving the mirror faster you can make the wings flutter. Try drawing faces in this way. Making faces

• Use the letters of the alphabet to make faces
• Write down your name on a piece of paper
• Now try to make a face out of the letters of your name
• Think of a flower and draw it using a letter from the alphabet for petals
• Draw a house and then try to draw the same house just using letters of the alphabet. You can make them as large or as small as you like, and change them around in any direction.
• Draw ten circles on a piece of paper and put the numbers 0 to 9 in the centre of each one, using these numbers as the nose in each circle. Now draw the rest of the face inside each circle.

Flip Book Task for Students

Either: Draw the outline of a face (no eyes, nose, or mouth, but DO draw ears and hair) on a sheet of paper then make several copies of it on a photocopying machine. You need to make copies so that each drawing is of the same size and matches up.
or:
Trace the face outline onto several sheets of paper using a thick pencil so that your drawing will show through.
When you have several copies of your face outline, start to draw some eyes moving from one side tot he other. Make the nose get longer in each drawing with the mouth opening wider and the tongue sticking out. Break the movement down stage-by-stage making sure each picture is only slightly different from the previous one.
Place your first drawing at the bottom and all your other drawings on top of this with the latest one on top. Now bind the left-hand side of the pages and flip the book from back to front.

Finger Shapes

Using a large sheet of paper, draw around your hand and fingers several times to make shapes. The fingers can be used for an alligator's jaws opening and closing or a rabbit's ears waggling. Your hand can be drawn around with the fingers opened and closed to look like a dog's head, an octopus, a snake, and even an elephant. Try thinking of other animals or characters that you can create using your hands.
In pairs, try making hand shadows on the wall. First you will need to stick a piece of paper on the wall and shine a light towards it. One pupil should then put their hand in front of the paper so that it creates a shdow shape, moving it closer or further away until the shadow is clear. The second pupil will then trace around the shadow. Now swop over so that both of you can create your own shadow shape.
Find some flat objects in the classroom and draw around them making several different pictures. Making cut-outs There are several wys to make cut-out figures. Thin cardboard is best to work with as it is stiffer than paper. On a piece of cardboard the size of a paper draw just the outline of a head - an oval shape - and cut it out. Then draw the following items on the cardboard and cut them out:

• Four sets of eyes from wide open to nearly closed
• Six mouths showing the sounds a e I o u and very wide open
• Four sets of odd shaped ears
• Four sets of eyebrows
• Four sets of hair styles
• Four different hats

Make up different faces with these cut-outs. Use a mirror and pull faces in the mirror to get some ideas. A simple way to make cut-outs is to stick magazine photos onto cardboard and cut around them. You can make pictures larger by using a photocopier. You can reverse them by tracing over the original then tracing over the back of the tracing paper.

Making up stories

Ideas can be very simple. For example you can draw a children's playground and show a child going down a slide, on a swing, on a seesaw, on a roundabout, and climbing a rope. Show three drawings of each picture to indicate movement:

• A dog walking machine
• A machine for a weighing an elephant
• A machine for waking you up in the morning
• A space rocket (put in all of the things you will need to go to Mars)
• A rowing machine
• A car that flies in the sky
• A machine for beating bullies
• A school bag that walks on its own

• You will need to cut out two pages to make your flip book (a roller) that you can flip using a pencil.
• First draw a sad face on the bottom piece of paper.
• Now trace over this face on the top piece of paper, but add a smile!
• Flip the top page with a pencil and watch your face change.

• Draw the lid of a box opening in six movements. Then re-draw it with something coming out of the box.
• Draw a caterpillar crawling along in five movements.
• Draw smoke coming out of a chimney and disappearing in four movements.
• Draw a juggler with three juggling clubs. Show the positions of the three clubs as they move through the air.

• Plop!
• Vrooooooooooooooom!
• Clang!
• Zap!
• Splosh!
• Crash!
• Wheeeeeeeee!

• A haunted house (ghostly noises, chains clanking, footsteps, groans, doors creaking, crazy laughter, whispers, wind, rain, thunder and lithening.)
• A farmyard (Animal noises, machinery noises.)

Using an audio cassette player make up some sound effects for these scenes. Use your voice, musical instruments and/or any objects available in the classroom to make the sound effects.

Storyboards

Filmmakers use storyboards to plan their films. Storyboards are a sequence of pictures with a description of the dialogue and action. They look similar to comic strips. Click here to see the storyboard from the film 'The Boy From Mercury'

TASK FOR STUDENTS Try to storyboard your favourite adventure from the Harry Potter books. Remember, though, the emphasis is on telling the story, so don't spend too long on the drawings. They can even be stick people if you want!We can now put some of these ideas we have learnt into action in the classroom. Here are some simple animation activities that you can try out yourself. All you need are your hands, a pencil and a lively imagination.