Stop Motion Animation - Go on, do it!

I've been meaning to write about stop motion animation for a while now, because it turns out it is very quick and easy to learn and a lot of fun to do.  I had been thinking about trying it so was very pleased when I was contacted by Hamilton City Libraries late last year.  They asked me if I wanted them to come over for a couple of lunchtimes and teach some students how to make stop motion animation to promote their summer reading programme.  The theme was the Waikato river.

I immediately thought of my Moustache Potatoes Comic Club (10-11 year olds); they were all very keen to participate.  I downloaded the free Stop Motion Studio app onto some of our school iPads and then the team from Hamilton City Libraries came round and showed us how it works.  Here is a short video I found today that explains it well (I admit we didn't even use the timer - it looks like a good idea!).  

The students picked it up straight away and were so enthusiastic and engaged with what they were doing.  The Hamilton City Library team had brought with them felt tips, coloured paper, pipe cleaners, Lego, and Playdoh.  For the first session the students had a chance to experiment with how animating worked and then in the next two sessions they made their animations.

This is what they came up with (we added the music once we'd uploaded the animations to YouTube):

For the last couple of weeks of Term 2 this year I went solo and taught members of my Ninja Readers & Storytellers Club how to do stop motion animation.  These were Year 4 students (8 year olds) but they too only required a couple of minutes' instruction before they were off and animating.  I brought in my own children's old toys and they used them to animate with.  We also used paper and whiteboards and one enterprising fellow simply animated himself!  

I loved watching both groups of kids get heavily involved with their creations.  Some found that viewers didn't understand the story they were trying to tell.  I thought this was a valuable lesson for them to think about how to get their ideas across clearly.   Next up I aim to use students' stop motion animations to promote reading and the library.  

Now that you've finished this post why don't you go off and give stop motion animation a go yourself?  It will only take half an hour (unless you get totally addicted, it is a possibility!).  Better yet, find some kids and get them to have go with you.  I guarantee you'll all enjoy it!

Moustache Potatoes - Part Two

Back in October I blogged about our new comic club, the Moustache Potatoes.  I said I would post about what I was doing every couple of weeks or so... (note to self, don't make promises!).  Here is what we got up to for the rest of the term:

Week Three

• We watched Bruce Blitz's "Make your Own Comic Book" tutorial and talked about his basic steps (Story Idea, Design Characters, Write Script, Rough Layout, Pencil, Ink).  Bruce has a book called "The Big Book of Cartooning" which is good value.

• I talked about where speech bubbles should be placed, and in what order.
• We then practised making our own comics using this blank six panel page.

Week Four

• We shared some stop motion videos that the students had made (this was an opportunity offered by Hamilton City Libraries, I'll post about it later).
• We talked about some basic questions and ideas for creating a comic:
• What happens?  Plan beginning, middle and end.
• Describe the best or worst day in your life.  Embellish to make a story.
• Decide – are your characters human, or animals that act human?
• Use fairytales for story ideas – make changes to the story e.g. add new characters, change details, change ending, think about what might have happened to the hero before or after the events described in the story.
• Use interesting events/situations from your own life for story ideas – school, family, friends.

Week Five

• I showed some different pages copied from Tintin, Babymouse, Hardy Boys etc.  These were examples of different speech bubbles, thought bubbles, exclamation and question marks (classic Tintin!), sounds and music.
• I also showed them a page called "Calling the Shots" from Drawing Comics Lab.  This describes how you can use different perspectives in a comic - from close-ups to an establishing shot.
• In response to students saying that they couldn't think of anything to make their comics about I handed out an example comic, with general suggestions for each panel and a bit of dialogue. There was a lot of leeway for them to include their own ideas, but it wasn't successful. I really thought they might produce a variety of stories based on my simple idea, but perhaps it was still too prescriptive.  I guess they preferred no ideas to someone else's!

Week Six

• A bit of fun this week with Dav Pilkey's Flip-O-Rama tutorial.

• I didn't show my students this but I was really impressed with Dav's ice bucket challenge:

Week Seven

• We did more flip-o-rama because as expected one session was not enough!
• Students also had the option to try out the Comic Life and Make Beliefs apps on the library's iPads.

Week Eight

• This was our last week because, despite protests, I had to accept that things were getting very busy as the end of the term approached.
• I was very happy with the Random Comic Generator that I created, inspired by the drawing exercise suggested in Drawing Comics Lab (pg.25).  This was popular with the Moustache Potatoes, who came up with some very creative comic strips.  

Week Nine

• Had I done another week I would have done a session on superheroes.  I have a book on how to draw Marvel superheroes and another one on heroes, both are out of print but there are others out there.
• I ask the students what they think their superhero will look like, their name, their powers, their secret identity, their sidekick, their weakness, their weapons, their enemy, their mission.  Then I ask them to make a comic about their adventures.
• For inspiration they can also create their own superhero with The Hero Factory and Marvel's Create your own Superhero (these websites don't work on an iPad).

Each week we would look at any drawings that the Moustache Potatoes had done at home. I would make sure that books on comics and how to draw were sitting on the tables and I often pointed out graphic novels to inspire the students and encourage them to read.  The Stickman Odyssey books were great to show that even a simple picture can tell a story.  The Flanimals series by Ricky Gervais are not graphic novels but the pictures and descriptions are also fun to try and imitate at home.  

I hope these posts are useful if you are looking at doing something like this yourself.  Don't let any lack of artistic ability hold you back - I didn't!  The students said they liked trying out new things, and they enjoyed being with peers who liked to draw.  They were very enthusiastic and fun to work with, and a few of them were struggling academically so it was nice to see them having fun in the library.

Moustache Potatoes Comic Club

On the recommendation of my Twitter friend @mrs_hyde I recently read a book called Boy Writers: Reclaiming their voices.  I loved this book.  As the mother of two boys who don't particularly enjoy writing I was fascinated by Ralph Fletcher's look at a writing classroom from a boy's perspective.  The book looks at the things that motivate boys to write.  It talks about the fact that some boys like to use violence in their stories, that they like zany or bathroom humour, and that they like to incorporate pictures in their stories.  We need to acknowledge these things in order to engage them.  

A few years ago I ran a comic club for a term (the Angry Pencils), mostly because I had a student who loved to make comic books and I wanted to give him more ideas.  I had a good turnout, and almost all of the club was boys, but I didn't continue with it as I had other projects to keep me busy.  After reading Boy Writers I decided that I should restart my comic club in order to try to reach some of our reluctant boy writers.

We now have sixteen Year 6 students in the club.  Seven are girls, which is a lot higher than the last time I ran it, but many have come from the Ninja Readers (our book club).  I am pleased that after the first week three more boys turned up, brought along by their friends (I must be doing something right!).

If you're interested in running your own comic club, I'll post what I've been doing every couple of weeks or so.  I'm not a cartoonist or artist myself so I'm using a lot of YouTube experts and books to inspire the kids.  We meet at morning tea so time is limited.  In a way I'm running a flipped model club because we watch a couple of YouTube clips and then I send the students away to practice and watch further clips if they want to by accessing the comic club page on the school website.

Here is what we've done so far:

Week One

• Generated ideas for a name.  A vote ended in a tie between "Moustache Pencils" and "Potato Quest" and they combined the two to come up with "Moustache Potatoes".
• Outlined a plan for the next few weeks.  In order to draw a good comic strip we need to have characters, so first up was learning how to draw a basic cartoon face.  In Week Two the plan was to learn to draw figures and then Week Three is moving on to comic strips.
• Watched a video - Toontorials - Basic Cartoon Face 1.  I encourage the kids to draw while watching the videos I show.
• Character ideas - I put up different eyes, ears, hair, mouths etc that I'd copied from drawing/comic books.  We talked about mixing and matching different features to come up with different characters.
• Facial expressions - I put up a page with different expressions and we talked about using expressions to help make your characters come to life and act for you.
• Website - I showed them the comic club page on the website with the extra videos on it and also the QR code that they could scan if they wanted to watch the videos on the library's iPads during lunch.  The extra videos on the website for Week One are "Toontorials - Basic Cartoon Face 2" and "How to draw 20 different emotions".
• Books - I showed them some of the library's cartoon and drawing books and also pointed out that you can get good ideas from reading our graphic novels.

Week Two

• We looked at drawings that students had made
• Stick figures - we watched a YouTube video about how to make a basic stick figure body and use body language to make it act for us.
• I showed examples of stick figures and body language from the book "Adventures in Cartooning".  This is a fantastic book by the way, I highly recommend it.  There is a series of them but the first one is the best.
• The extra videos on the website for drawing figures are: "How to draw a person pt:1", "How to draw a person pt:2" and "How to draw figures: How to draw people figures".  The first two show a more advanced way to draw figures and the last one is a professional animator talking about how to draw male and female bodies (proportions only, don't worry it's suitable for kids!).
• As the long weekend was coming up I suggested they might enjoy having a go on www.drawastickman.com and doing a fun drawing exercise suggested in "Drawing Comics Lab" (p.25).
• Finally we watched a video by Dav Pilkey, author of the hugely popular Captain Underpants series.  He talks about his inspirations for "Super Diaper Baby 2 - The Invasion of the Potty Snatchers".  

Update:  I didn't manage to post about this every couple of weeks so here is the link to my other post about the Moustache Potatoes Comic Club.