Zu3D

Todays lesson was basically so we could familiarise ourselves with the software Zu3D. This software is amazing for children as they get to create their own animations, gaining skills such as creativity and problem solving. Not forgetting the amount of fun they will get out of it! The website says its brilliant for children and adults and they are definitely not wrong! I am 21 years old and I had a blast playing on it! 

Its a really good application which allows you to make an animation using either drawings or photos. As its being made, it is presented as a a series of slides of different pictures. But by pressing play the application creates a movie or clip by quickly flicking through all the pictures to make it look like the objects are moving. 

This lesson was useful as we got to play with all the different tools that are available from this software so we know what to expect when it comes to making our actual projects. 

The software is really quite simple to use as everything is quite simple and basic - It's easy to understand what each button is for, so there is no confusion. 

After making the animation there is a choice to add music, or sound affects that are already on your computer, or you can upload some from online, or you can even make a recording of your own voice and play that. 

Overall I think this is a really good app and I look forward to using it some more as the weeks go by. 

This is my first attempt at it, using the drawing tool. It may not look very good but I am actually very proud of it! 

Animation as a Learning Tool

From the session last week and from what you already feel about animation, what do you think animations have to offer the learning process?

Created with Padlet

Claymation - Stop motion Animation

For the second part of our assignment we have to make some form of stop motion animation. There are loads of different types we can choose from, such as drawings, clay, and photographs. I have decided to use Claymation as I find it really interesting to watch and would love to give it a go myself. 

Here is some information about Claymation...

Claymation was created by a man named Will Vinton. Claymation involves using objects or characters sculpted from clay or other moldable material, and then taking a series of still pictures that are replayed in rapid siccession to create the illusion of movement.To create the illusion of movement, the position of the sculptured characters is altered slightly in every still photo.

Advantages of using 'Claymation'
It allows me to create a short movie based on my own ideas and storyline. 
It is very fun to produce!
It can be done at my own pace, when I have the time to do it because it can be done anywhere.
Making 'Claymation' allows me to experiment with new equiptment, which I usually wouldnt use. 


Disadvantage of using 'Claymation'
Claymation is very time consuming to produce. To successfully complete the task it will take a lot of preparation time, photo-taking time and then editing time. The average professional Claymation takes 24 photos per second...and I need to produce a 2 minute video. Very time consuming. 

The most popular example is Wallace and Gromit.

Here is a video which shows step by step how to make a basic claymation. 

The last animation I watched...

The last animation I watched was Frozen. It is a brilliant film and I really enjoyed it! I have watched it so many times! The songs are great and catchy. What I love most about this film is that not many children's films and cartoons like this one promote independence. Instead, they all include a woman who needs a rich prince to come and save her! In this film, the princess in independent and does not need a man and is happy being just by herself which I think is important.

Frozen is a 3D Computer Animated film about a princess who has icy powers she cannot control. After a huge accident where she freezes the whole of the kingdom she runs away into the mountains. Her sister tries to find her, with the help of a snow salesman, a talking snowman and an overly excited reindeer.

How to upload a podcast

Today we learned how to create a Podcast. We did not have much time to play around with the sound which is why our example is only a few seconds long.

We used a website called Audacity, which is free to download on to pretty much any computer. This is a really easy to use and simple website when creating a podcast.
Our project involves making a podcast that is 10 minutes long, and even though we could use our phones to record our voices, it is a long time to talk without making any mistakes.
This website is good because it allows me to edit what I have already done. I can also do it in sections and record everything a bit at a time and it automatically just flows on from the previous recording.

After we had recorded our message and were happy with it we had to save it as an MP3 file. Saving the recording normally creates a WAV file which means that we would not be able to save it on to our Blogger.

To save the file as an MP3 was really easy to do. Just click on file at the top, then instead or clicking save, click on export. Type in what you want the file to be called and then underneath there is a drop down box, which has WAV written on it. Click on this and select MP3 instead and then save.

Then we had to get the MP3 file on to our Blogger using a website called Archive. Once i had created an account, i pressed the upload button, names the file I wanted to upload and waited for it to upload. Then when that was done, I got the Embed code and linked that onto a new blog post.

Before this lesson on Podcasts I was really worried about this assignment. I thought it was going to be really difficult to do! But after going through it this way I think that it is going to be okay, as it was pretty easy to do.