| Description
This unit was developed and taught in Glen Eden Intermediate's
digital classroom. Students spend two weeks full time in this
room where there is an emphasis on cross-curricular, constructivist
learning. The room contains eight multimedia PCs.
We began the unit by watching some cameraless
animations (Word doc, 32k) and discussing generally what we
saw and why we thought the animators were making these abstract
works rather than Mickey Mouse cartoons.
I then introduced the names of some animators and sent pairs
of students to the Internet to research different artists. I wanted
them to find out two things:
- How does this person make cameraless animation?
- Why do they make it?
We met later as a group to share our findings. Cameraless animation
techniques were listed and included scratching on film, drawing
on film, and painting on film. Artist's reasons for making cameraless
animation were more complicated but could be divided into two
catagories: practical reasons (they could not afford, or did not
have access to, a camera and developing equipment) and artistic
reasons (the exploration of light, movement, colour,  sound
and the relationship between these things).
At this point I introduced Paint (How
to Use Paint, pdf, 138k) and Microsoft GIF Animator (Making
Simple Animations with Microsoft Gif Animator, pdf, 151k),
taking the pairs of students step by step through the process
of making a simple 3-frame animation (a square flying around and
changing colour). I then let them "play" with the software,
exploring its capabilities and gaining confidence.
I repeated this process with Hammerhead Rhythm Station introducing
them to the software and then letting them explore independently.
I emphasised the need to save
beats as WAV files (pdf, 94k), and then explained that GIF
Animator and Hammerhead were the software
we would be using to make our own cameraless animations.
As a group we again watched the cameraless animations we'd viewed
earlier. We discussed them in more depth and asked questions,
for example, How does that shape go with that sound? Why does
it move in that direction when that piece of music plays? What
shape is pink? How does a circle sound? etc.
I then explained the task to the students: to make their own
piece of cameraless animation that explored somehow the relationship
between colour, shape, movement, and music, in the style of the
pieces they'd watched.
Students completed a rough storyboard and explained their concept
to me before beginning work on the computer. Then they worked
independently.
When most students were nearing completion I took them through
the process of putting
the
sound
and image together in Frontpage (pdf, 92k).
When finished we shared our work. Click on an example below to
view sample animations.
The animations were evaluated according to the cameraless
animation assessment sheet (pdf, 204k), by
both the student and teacher. |
