Animation Activities 

Did you realise there are so many different ways you could create an animation for this activity!

We have expanded some ideas below – but you may have other ideas as well.

Stop motion:

Before you begin you may want to explore with an adult which phone/tablet App would work best for you, suggestions include: ‘Stop Motion Studio’, ‘Life lapse animation’ or ‘I can Animate’.

The steps to create your stop motion animation:

Hint: you may want to plan beforehand a little bit on paper what your scene is going to involve.

Decide what materials you would like to use to create a moveable character: you could use coloured paper, playdough, a set of clothes, foil, everyday objects - such as cups, plates - , lego or even drawing on a whiteboard – the possibilities go on! The key is to keep it very simple!

Once you have created a character, decide the background and set up a scene.

Set up your phone camera pointing at the scene where it can stay very still (on a stand, tripod or something that grips is best),

Next, take a photo of your character in a starting position. Then, leaving the camera where it is, you need to change the position of your character very slightly and take another photo, the bigger the movements the less photos you will need but the small movements will create a smoother film at the end.

Continue to move your character slightly and take a photo until you have completed your scene. - this could take a little while to get right so keep going!

Then, the easiest way to piece all your photos together would be to use the app you decided with an adult (see above) with which you can upload your photos and piece them all together to make the character move.

You are finished! Now you can play back your animation and show us and you friends!

Pixel Animation:

On this Piskel App website you can create your very own sprite – another name for a character - a bit like Lepedina and Tagomas within the Adventure!

Draw an image of your character/ sprite.

Duplicate this image using the button on the small version of your image in the top left and then edit this new version slightly to look like they have moved.

Keep going with as many images as you want, you only need 2 to get a movement but you could have 3 or 5 or more!

At each step you can preview in the top right-hand corner and watch your character/ image come to life.

Change the FPS using the slider below the preview to get the speed right

Then choose save or export to create a GIF of your animation!

No PC or Technology? - no problem!

You could even combine the two options above simply by using a pack of post -its notes or exercise book!

Draw an image on the first note, and then draw again but changed slightly on the second. 

Keep going on a new page/ note each time for as long as you wanted.

You can then flip through the pages to see what it looks like.

You can of course take this further again and take a photo of every image to import into a stop motion app like above! Here is an example.

Programming Activity

We have some ideas below to help get you started to create your own game, story or short clip.

When putting a game together yourself you will definitely need to do a bit of planning first!

Look at the other job areas in the archives – have you created any artwork of your characters? – or have you designed on paper or similar what your game involves and perhaps drawn/ written a walk through of what that first bit might look like?

Only once you have that very clear idea in your mind will you be able to go about programming it, this is how teams in the games industry can work together to build the final games you see.

Stages of making your own game – may or may not be in this order!:

Design your Characters/ Sprites and Environment – sprites might be gems or fruit or similar that makes up the counters in your game rather than actual talking/ living characters (see above).

Detail what will happen in your game, what is the goal, how does the player win or complete the game? Are they racing or collecting points or getting through a maze for example?

Start to think about how you might use the programme you are going to use in order to put this into a computer game.

Get familiar with the site you are thinking of using – it might be you want to practice programming but don’t want to set up a full game that’s ok as well! You could use it instead to come up with a story or short animation instead.

Here are 3 different sites that would help get you started – use their own tutorials to learn more about how each one works.

Scratch Twine Sandbox

Don’t forget to send any creations you make in to us! It could be a screenshot or picture rather than a full game. Click here to see how you can submit your contribution.