Author Biography: Stephanie Sutton, owner and instructor of Digital Animation for Kids, has been teaching in the

Cleveland area for 7 years. She was a technology consultant for 9 years in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland specializing in technical support systems and training. Mrs. Sutton holds a Masters of Public Management with a concentration in technology from Carnegie Mellon University. Her current projects include digital media classes for students of all ages in animation, video, and gaming using the best of the free, educational technology tools that are available and widely used to create programs in digital animation, digital movie making, video game creation, 3D modeling, website creation, book trailers, and video production. Activity Summary
Your mission: Create a dynamic, animation lesson for a range of skill sets while engaging the students as quickly as possible. To meet your students various needs, you must have a lively, exciting application like www.fluxtime.com which loads quickly. Its colorful and enticing and your students will readily start drawing and using the bright backgrounds. Its intuitive and smart. Class or subject area: Any Grade level(s): Pre-K through Grade 12 Specific learning objectives: Create a fun animation class quickly Works with every skill level Incorporates all ages Free Web based application Website contains great directions & fun video examples from students around the world ESOL friendly Perfect for class time, free time, camps, after school programs

Anniversary Book Project

5th

A Simple Animation Lesson Plan for Students Pre K to 12

By: Stephanie Sutton Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-SA Author contact: computerteacherhudson@yahoo.com

There are many educators and librarians focused on after-school programs, supplemental education, camps, clubs, contests, and activities that stretch beyond a classroom. Digital media is a wonderful tool to produce short stories, graphic novelettes, book trailers. When you are working with digital animation, you may think of different projects to incorporate like creating a class around a book session or sleepy time session. A class that you are already running may be enhanced, promoted by digital animation. Projects for ages 3 to 18 are very accessible and easily completed using an online application called Fluxtime, found at twww.fluxtime.com. Animation may be used to reinterpret a story or create a different ending. You may want to advertise your programs with a short animation on your website or make printed materials using digital animation. You may also want to create digital animation emails to remind your patrons about your events or promote an upcoming Family Night, events. There are levels in digital animation Fluxtime, such as beginner, intermediate and advanced. Fluxtime in your library is a wonderful tool for using with all skill levels and ages. This makes Fluxtime a great tool and opportunity for many programs. Brainstorming ideas for creating Fluxtime animation movies: Holidays History Testing Graphic Novels Writing Email messages Notes to others A day in the life Retelling a classic fairy tale Retelling your favorite movie Building a home Stop motion animation Building a family The story of my family The story of my hobbies The story of my favorite sports The story of my first time at a museum Building my room Building my classroom Rotating views of my room Rotating views of my classroom Building my own website using animation as a how to guide Building a butterfly Building a football game Repetition Weather : wind, sunset, rain, storm, lightning Facial Expressions Familiar Cartoons Transformations/ morphing Nature: palm trees, pine trees Science Fiction Abstracting shapes Fluxtime Lesson Open www.fluxtime.com in your favorite web browser. School of Fish: Simple Lesson in Creating a Group Movement 1. Select the background template. Select a fish from the insert shape tool. continued... Paste fish to create a school of fish. Group the fish and select the move tool. Record, move the fish in a slow, swaying movement from left to right creating a school of fish swimming gently. Bubbles are a part of any good underwater scene. Lets work on creating realistic bubbles floating upwards.

Create opaque bubbles of two different sizes from the Insert New Shape tool. Cluster the bubbles together. Next, use the Select tool to draw a box around the bubbles and then Group the bubbles. Next, Copy and Paste a the group of bubbles.

The mirror effect makes it easy to create many different patterns of the bubbles quickly.

Group all of the bubbles together and move the bubbles slowly upward. Next, take the timeline and bring it back to the left to the beginning of the clip. Select the group of fish then select the Record button. Move the school of fish across the screen slowly while the bubbles are moving upwards. Stop the recording and play back your clip. You should see a realistic movement of both the fish and the bubbles clustered upwards. To create a different type of look try the mirror tool.

For more good ideas, select the bubbles group and fish group and select the Forward/Backward by clicking right and left. Animate your clip using the Forward/Backward and review the movements of both the fish and the bubbles. Fluxtime Lessons in Movement using Shapes & Un-Grouping Library Shapes The background scene for Spring and Summer may be any type of day or poolside template. Ask students to brainstorm ideas of Spring.

The Edit tool will give options about where to pull, push, and edit the shape of the tongue of the lizard. There are other examples you can use to challenge students to bring characters to life with realistic movements like eyes blinking, mouths moving, hands and fingers waving. Lets look at more examples. Talking Heads Lesson: Creating Eyelashes to enhance blinking Create a character onscreen. Choose a character with a large face or enlarge a face with 2 clear eyes. Create an eyelid for the character by placing a black circle covering most of the eye and ensuring it fits. We are trying to make the eyelid fit precisely on the eye. Now we need to create an exaggerated set of eyelashes from the curved line shape in the Library selection. Tip: Exaggerate the look and feel of faces to draw attention to them. Color eyelashes differently from the rest of the eye and color lips differently from the rest of the mouth.

Ask students to choose lizards and place one on each side of the screen after they have cut out the foreground flowers.

Next, practice taking the lizards tails and extending them out and in. Add lizard tongues to the lizards and extend those out and in. To accomplish this, encourage the students to magnify the picture and then select the Edit a Shapes points, lines and curves tool. Tip: You may Ungroup characters. For instance, Ungroup this characters face to create a smoother talking mouth.

Create a copy of the eyelid next to the character. Place both the eyelid and the eyelashes together. You will use the Rotate tool to place the eyelashes correctly. Use the cut, paste to place the eyelid in front of the eyelashes. Tip: Using the Oval shape from your selection of Shapes is better than a half circle because Oval shapes have more points to edits and therefore more flexibility of eyelid shapes.

Over exaggerate the eyelids by pulling out the corners of the lids using the Edit shape tool. Group the eyelids, eyelashes and pull the group down with the Shape tool. Practice, Record, rerecord if you like as many times as you need. Now, try to make the mouth open and close. You can use many tools. Select the Foreward/ Backward with a mouthpiece of red and black placed inside the mouth outline in the character

Use the Edit shapes points, lines, and curves to make the eyelid a half of an oval.

Turn the eyelids blue and use the Edit shape tool to pull the eyelids up and down while Recording. Try this over and over again.

Create a mouth with moving lips and colors. Practice moving parts of the eyes and mouth. Practice moving the character across the screen in your clip.

Growing Flowers: Lesson in Movement and Shading Select two shapes from the Insert New Shape tool and paste them into a Day in the Park background. The shapes are the heart shape and the elongated teardrop shape.

objects for grouping and movement. Insert 2 aliens. Cut and paste the ship to make the animation look as if the aliens are getting into the ship. Finally, group the ship and the aliens to move them together through the sky. Create a Basketball Game: Lessons in Movement, Shapes, and Editing Creating a basketball game is an excellent lesson for studying movement, creating characters, and studying realistic passing, shooting, scoring, opponents. Create hoops and balls; create characters, create movements between characters. Practice the movements and then Record them. Rerecord if necessary and play again. In this lesson, circles, rectangles, boxes, squiggly lines, and other random shapes are used to create a basketball scene. Tip: Practice your movements before you record them. Recording and rerecording will create a movements that arent planned. Remember that cutting and pasting will place objects in front and in back creating animations that look more realistic.

Now, color all of the stems. Record the hearts and stems then take the timeline back to the beginning of the clip. Now add petals slowly and start the petals very small. Record as you elongate and grow the petals. Also, play with the shading, shape and height of the flowers. Imagine they are growing and opening, falling to the ground softly or blowing in the wind. Space Travel: Lessons in Lasers, Creating Spaceships Select a Space background. Insert a spaceship using the Insert New Shape tool. Now select or draw aliens to board the ship and move inside the ship across space. This lesson practices the order which you add objects or cut and paste

Using no hands and instead leaving longer sleeves on the shooter creates a less complicated and smoother shot.

if they are moving. Create as many of these scenes with slight differences as needed to create your Stop Motion movie. For this Stop Motion lesson, lets create a stickman walking. First, create the stickman in an animae style type. On a white template background, Insert Shape, choose an open circle and change the color to black. If the face outline is too thick, use the Edit Shapes points, lines, and curves to create a unique, quirky styled face.

Lessons in Stop Motion using Fluxtime animation 1. Create the entire picture and save. 2. Delete a small piece of the picture and save as the above name plus .1 3. For instance, create a baby and save as Baby picture. 4. Create a Select box around the baby and then select Group. 5. Copy the baby and paste it next to the original baby picture.

I think that the quirky style of creating stick people is always a fun and much more exciting way to engage people to watch your video or animation short.

Recreate the baby with slight changes like make the babys eyes squint with tears flowing and a rattle broken on the floor instead of in the babys hand. Print screen this Fluxtime shot and save 2 separate screenshots in MS Paint. The first is Baby for StopMotion and Baby for Stop Motion .1. Each shot will be placed into MS Movie Maker. The frameshot will be placed at .25 so the shots will show in order very quickly which is the animation illusion making the characters look as

There are slight movement and arrangement differences between these 2 stick people. Creating a Bouncing Ball Movement Make a ball moving from one height, traveling downward and elongating and then squashing out of its shape as it hits the floor. Finally, the ball regains its shape and bounces upward. Zooming in Take the magnifying tool and create a slow zoom in by Recording and moving toward your intended object.