Introduction

Recap what animation is from last week. Ask the class - What is a frame? 

Open 2Animate from Purple Mash again. In this lesson we will look at some of the other tools that are available to give you different options when you are creating your animations.

Take a look the extra drawing tools that are available when you click on the tools option.

 

 

Ask - Do you recognise any of these tools? What do they do? Reference the similarities to the tools from 2Paint a picture.

You now get pen and pencil tools, shape drawing tools, line drawing, flood fill, various effect brushes, a text tool and select tool. You also get a variety of colour and thickness choices for your brushes at the bottom of the panel. 

 

 

These can all help you add detail and speed up your drawings.

 

Onion skinning

No we're not switching to a food tech lesson! Onion skinning is a really useful feature of many animation tools, which overlays a previous frame on top of an new one, like the layers in an onion, so you can see the previous position of objects in a frame, and therefore make it easier to see how much to move or change them. Let's take a look at an example and go back to the simple idea of a moving ball from lesson 1.

In frame 1 we'll just draw the ball again.

 

 

Now we'll turn on onion skinning from the top toolbar.

 

 

Then click on the second frame on the film strip. Instead of an empty frame you'll see a slightly faded version of frame 1. This isn't actually part of frame 2, you are just seeing frame 1 behind frame 2.

 

 

You can then draw a new ball in frame 2, using the onion skin layer as a guide for where to draw the new one.

 

 

As you click on frame 3 you'll see the image from frame 1 disappear and be replaced by the onion skin layer from frame 2. So you can repeat the process.

 

 

 

Ask the class to try this out themselves and use the onion skinning tool. Encourage them to stick to small movements between each frame and it should help them create smoother animations.

 

The select tool.

The select tool is really useful and can save a lot of time. Last week we copied frames and edited them, or redrew images in each frame, but this can be very time consuming if you want your whole picture to move, especially if you want to spend some time adding detail to the object or character  The select tool lets us grab a rectangular area of the screen and move everything that’s inside it.

Draw a stick person or animal in frame one, how do I copy this frame into frame 2? Demo this to recap the last lesson.

 

 

Remind them that this frame needs to be different, use the select tool (dotted rectangle) to drag a box around the character, then move their character slightly by clicking and dragging from anywhere inside the box to create a movement. Be careful not to grab the purple handles at the edge of the box as they resize the picture (unless you want to) If students do this by accident, use the undo arrow at the top of the screen.

 

 

 

You can also rotate the selected image with the dotted purple handle inside the selected box.

 

 

Repeat this by copying frame 2 into frame 3 and moving the character again. Continue to repeat this process for 8-10 frames, making sure each movement is a very small one. Emphasise how important this is to the children. Why wouldn’t it look as good if we make larger movements?

 

 

Do we also want to move any body parts? You will need to rub out and re-draw those to create movement. Repeat this for a few more frames to demonstrate the process, then play it back.

 

 

Ask the children to create their own animations using the select tool with stick figures or simple drawings in up to 15 frames.

Remind the children how to save their work so they can save as they go and create more than one animation. They can do a normal save into their Purple Mash 'My work' or class area.

 

 

or export their animations as animated GIF files as described in lesson 1. Don't forget to set an appropriate speed before exporting! 

 

 

Plenary

Take a look at your animations from today’s lesson. Do the character/objects move smoothly? Did you move them the right amount each time? Which is your favourite animation? Why?

Swap with someone else in the room and look at each other’s animations. Is their animation smooth? What is good about it? Could they have improved it in any way? Did they use the select tool to move part of their animation between frames?