Have a great Christmas and a happy, healthy new year!

Keeping ideas short and simple is a good starting point for any animation project, if the class have a familiar theme, story or idea it will keep everyone involved focused, which will influence the final outcomes in a positive way. The random, "lets make it up as we go", approach, will be good fun but the final product/outcome won't be as good.

So adapting a story the class/group are familiar with is a very good idea.

I did a project with year fours last year adapting and animating the Twits!

The class had to decide on which scenes should be included in their animated adaptation, as not all the scenes would be possible or easy to film.

The clip below is a good example of a simple scene from the Twits, Mrs Twit adding worms to Mr Twit's Spaghetti. A simple fun visual scene. This clip has no sound, so make sure you set aside time for the sound, voices etc.



I like the look of this competition being organised by Film Street.

Film Street, the award winning filmmaking website for children, has just launched an animation competition for children and schools, Animate IT ’09: To cut a long story short.

In partnership with Kudlian Software, the Picture Production Company and the National Year of Reading we are inviting children under 12, primary schools and after school groups to make an animated trailer to promote their favourite book; our patron is CBBC’s Ed Petrie.

You have until April to enter your work and there are prizes!

Here are the outcomes from the advanced animation course for teachers held at the Institute of Education on 5th December.

The day long course was intended for teachers who have been using animation in the classroom and wanted to discover new ideas and practice they can use with their students.

So the day included the following:

1-Chroma Keying with I can animate and a green screen.

2-The use of different shots, long shots, mid shots and close ups.

3-Reaction to action. This really brings characters to life!

4-Pausing the action and creating beats within the animation, links to the above point.

5-Using multiple sound effects and music to give added depth to the animations, animation is 60% sound.

6- And finally creating much simpler story ideas, reducing the ideas down to a raw essence, keeping it painfully simple. Simple doesn't mean boring and unimaginative.

So there was quite a lot to do in one day! The participants worked in small groups of four and each group came up with a fun simple idea. Only one group could do the chroma keying as I only have one green screen. The green screen cloth was sourced from Kudlian Soft.

In the past I have worked with students using a large piece of green paper from the art department which provided a perfect key. (Traditionally green and blue screens are used in the film industry because there are no blue or green hues/colours in our skin tones.)

Remember when making your models don't include any green modeling clay if you're using a green screen.

The key to a successful chroma key is light, an even spread of light on your green/blue screen.

The chroma key in the animation below isn't great because of the poor light, also I think using a video camera will generate better results, both films were shot with webcams.



I like the sound effects in the Christmas surprise and the reaction to action by both the Christmas tree and the bird. The sound effects were sourced from www.findsounds.com

This project is still in the planning stages and is going to be one of the most challenging I've ever done, but also exciting and potentially very rewarding.

A great opportunity for any budding young animators, Sharp-Shotz is in it's second year and is organised by Aardman Animations and UWE. 

This short animation was made during a two hour animation session for teachers in Cape Town, South Africa. The five music teachers involved had never animated before and had very limited resources, the brief I gave all eighty teachers was to create a short animation they could use with their class as a teaching resource. 

This isn't my first flip movie, but the results of my first video training session using the very popular and affordable Flip Video Camera, involving eighty teachers in Cape Town, South Africa. Another short session, introducing video editing with iMovie, then a brief explanation of using the Flip Video ( This is the easiest camera I've ever used) participants in pairs filmed for about 15 mins then edited their footage in iMovie adding titles, music etc. finally exporting the finished results via Bluetooth on to mobile phones. 

Day two of a six day tour of South Africa, training teachers to use
Apple technology in the classroom. Cape Town is the creative hub of
South Africa home to video and film production for the advertising and
TV world. Beautiful beaches and sceanery, fantastic light and most of
all low production costs.

During the two days 80 teachers have learnt to edit and shoot video,
work with digital still images, create podcasts and short animation
films designed for use in their class. 20 of the teachers involved had
never used a laptop before and had no experience of a track pad or
drag and drop. But by the second day these less experienced teachers
were creating content that was just as good if not better than the
teachers who had years of experience with IT. They where empowered
with simple and easy to use tools, that allowed them to learn and
develop new skills quickly for use in their classrooms.

These skills will be valued and understand in this creative capital of
South Africa. If education supports the main industry and the industry
supports education then Cape Town can develop this world class
industry with pride and confidence.

There's a fantastic opportunity for young creatives aged 13- 19 . BBC Blast  want films, animations etc work for possible screening on BBC 2 and at the BFI in London in December. Click here for the link. There's also information about funding for students to develop their creative skills working with the BBC.