Stop Motion Animation Challenge 3

21 Feb 2012

This is the third challenge for my middle school movie-making club that is creating stop motion animations. This challenge is “Draw Something.” Below is the animation I created as an example for this challenge. You can also take a look at Challenge 1, Challenge 2, and the Movie-Making Club wiki, where I am documenting what we are doing.

The way I created this was to print out a simple drawing of Homer Simpson. (I’m not much of an artist.) I taped it to the desk with another paper over the top so I could do my tracing. I propped my MacBook up with a book stand from the library, like I have when I’ve used my laptop as a document camera.

Me creating the animation.

I recommend using a good, thick pen. Unfortunately, the permanent marker I was using bleeds. This made it difficult to make small lines that look like a continuation of the previous line. Towards the end I figured out that if I started drawing over the end of the previous line it looked better, but never made a really smooth line. Also, it was a little difficult drawing upside down, but the image I was tracing was fairly simple. I’m excited to see what my students create. One, in particular, is an excellent artist.

The book stand.