In this week's seminar I created a video animation with Zu3D, my plan is that i will use this software to create my final piece. at first Zu3D did give of the image of being very basic and simple, but as it it aimed at children I understand why they have set it up this way however the more I played around with it the more features I discovered. As you can see from the video I produced and upload i am still learning and have not full grasped every aspect of the software yet.

Stop-motion Animation

Stop-motion is a type of animation technique in which an object is physically manipulated and photographed in order to make it appear to move on its own. The object which can be anything is moved very slightly between each picture and when the series of frames are placed together in sequence create the illusion of movement.

Not all stop motion requires figures or models; many stop motion films can involve using humans, household appliances and other things for comedic effect. Stop motion using objects is sometimes referred to as object animation While researching stop-motion animation i came across this video which i though was very well produced along with being particularly creative and wonderfully imaginative.

Stop-motion animation is very popular due to its uniqueness to animate objects that cannot move by themselves, along with the fact that almost anyone can do it, creatively and patience seem to be the limiting factors with stop-motion animation. All you need is a camera, a computer and an imagination. Nowadays these facilities are common so start-up costs can be quite low, amateur productions can be created with a camera or iPad, however creating an effective stop-motion animation involves specialist equipment with experienced animators not to mention the hours of time they take to create to produce.  

(How to create an animation video)

The average profession animation consists of:

•          24 frames per second, thats
•          1,440 frames for one minute
•          meaning 129,600 pictures for a 90 minute film

There are many advantages to stop-motion animation in education a fun and exciting classroom task to create a stop-motion animation can excite pupils and motivate them to research their chosen subject area along with improving communication and teamwork skills, team work is essential when creating a stop-motion animation and both these are transferable skills which are essential though out life.

More recently stop-motion animation have become very popular on video sharing websites and social networking websites, I have witness many of these first hand and are common on my Facebook new feed and they can be very creative and enjoyable to watch, like with many things that thrives on social networking sites animation has been picked up by businesses for advertising purpose their uniqueness and ability to make an inanimate object appear to move fits in perfectly to many business media marketing strategy and advertising campaigns

http://www.qudos-animations.co.uk/ is one example of this and shows how you can make a successful business from animation.

Another example of this is at the box office, the table shows the amount of money a good animation film can make. So chicken for example made $106,834,564 that is approximately £64,249,772 (when this was published).

Styles of stop-motion animation:

Claymation - in my eyes is the most complicated taking up a lot of time and patience to do well and as the name suggests uses clay models, the advantage are that you can create almost anything and move it in almost any manner the disadvantages are that the clay models can easily be damaged while filming.

Pixilation – is the use of live actors as puppets/characters, with the slight movements between frames gives the illusion that the person is moving, this technique is popular due to the lack of effort need although it does beg the question why not just make a video instead.



Cut-out animation – is created using characters made from card or paper or something similar, and uses a similar technique although not as popular due to how time consuming and needs a certain skilled drawing, on the other hand it does have few limitation with the freedom to create almost any idea.

Silhouette animation – very similar to the cut-out style, silhouette uses lighting to reflect the characters it has been around since the early 1900’s this styles tends to be easy to create and produce and creates an impressive final pieces.it is ideal for animations with a gloomy atmosphere, seen in a lot of Tim Burton’s marvelous creations.

A Brief history of stop-motion animation

• Stop-motion animations started out as short 20-30 second animations and are now used to create full feature length films.
• It is widely believed that the first ever stop-motion animation was created by Albert Smith and Stuart Blackton around the 1890’s titled ‘The Humpty Dumpty Circus’.
• Emile Cohl a French animator brought stop-motion animation popular with his used of puppets and drawings, his first animation for ‘Fantasmagorie’, (1908) consisted of  700 drawings that he photographed to produce the animation.
• Willis O’Brien produced ‘The Lost World’ (1925) which combining animated dinosaurs with live-action footage of actors which was a major leap forward for stop-motion animation, and later when to produced ‘King Kong’ (1933).
• And more recently Nick Park man behind 'CreatureComforts' and 'Wallace and Gromit', has brought stop-motion animation in to the 21^st century.
• Stop-motion animation has changed dramatically of the years, with the development of 3D digital animation films can be created quicker and easier. 

Animation

I cant quite remember the last animation i saw, it was one of two great animations either the classic cartoon show which is the Simpsons or equally amazing and marvelously creative app 'Dumb ways to Die' it is a public service announcement campaign produced by Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia, to promote rail safety. This campaign video went viral in a big way back in November 2012.

 

The idea behind the campaign was the advertising agency McCann Melbourne, and their creative director said "The aim of this campaign is to engage an audience that really doesn't want to hear any kind of safety message, and we think Dumb Ways To Die will." Regardless of its popularity the statistics train safety has shown little change in the majority of areas. A video was developed by Pat Baron, animated by Julian Frost and produced by Cinnamon Darvall.
• It was viewed 2.5 million times within 48 hours.
• It was viewed 4.7 million times within 72 hours.
• After the first two weeks, the video had been viewed 28 million times.

The music in the video was written by John Mescall with Ollie McGill providing the sound. In May 2013, Metro released a game based around the video as an app, the game was produced by Samuel Baird and Julian Frost. The aim of the game is to avoid and complete different stupid and dangerous activities, such as keeping a rattle snake as a pet and eating a two week old unrefrigerated pie, along with the app, the user can also make a promise to "not do dumb stuff around trains". since its release this viral video as gone on to win many prestigious and respect awards within its field both nationally and globally. Find how more by following this link:http://dumbwaystodie.com/

Exam Results

I have just received my mark for the ‘game based learning’ assignment and i am thoroughly pleased with the result, at first i was not sure about the assignment and worried it might be slightly boring as it was not an area in which I thought was practically exciting. When I was at school any game based learning was nowhere near as fun as anything I did at home. With this being said it was one of the most interesting assignment I have ever had the pleasure of writing there was a great deal of relevant and interesting information and studies written about game based learning, at some points it was difficult to know what to include into the assignment and what to keep out being it was only 2000 words. Game based learning despite having been around for a long time is in the forefront of education and is very current. There are many new and old ideas and theories centered on game based learning it was practically interesting researching a subject that is developing so quickly and is current within the education system, if you enter in to most learning environment you can see first-hand game based learning, it does make a nice change to research a subject which is kind of new and shows great potential for the future. This subject area has really motivated me; I will even be continuing research around this subject area despite already handing in the assignment. This is a very rare occasion. I don’t tend to much extra work outside of what needs to be done, which only show how captivating this subject area is for me at least. Although this could also mean that I am essentially a nerdy individual and am interested boring computer stuff.

With this being said the next assignment does also look like it will be as fun and interesting as the last and I am very eager to get started. I have many possible ideas on what I wish to achieve, I only hope that the images and ideas in my head will actually work and the video I create will indeed look like what I want it to, because in several case what I imaging and the reality are to very different things.

Gaming Lesson

Gaming Lesson

For the final session for this year we first discussed the ‘game day’ which I have already blogged about and then we had to create a lesson plan based around a game. In this lesson we discussed as groups the:
• Learning objectives
• How it links in with previous learning
• Key skills
• Resource
• Time

Activities Other areas that also need to be considered are:
• Vocabulary
• Support staff Activities
• Cross curriculum links
• Assessment opportunities

Game Day

Game Day

For this session we looked first hand at gaming and tried out different games console or technology with different games. In small groups we took turn on each of these:

• Nintendo Wii – Wii Sports
• Microsoft Xbox (with connect) – Adventure land
• iPads – Mystery game
• Tablet PC – Doctor Who

Technocamps

Technocamps
Instead of this week seminar we went to a Technocamps conference. While there we received lecture and workshop for experts in the field, there knowledge and passion for what they are trying to achieve is contagious I could not help but be impressed by most of the information on offer. 

Technocamps is a project set up to run free lectures and workshops on different ways to engage and motivate young people (11-19 years) on game design, programming, robotics almost anything new, education and ICT based. It is led by Swansea University and concentration on the students of wales and teaching them about ‘computer science and STEM and challenging them to think about the world around them in a different way’, (Technocamps website: http://www.technocamps.com/). 

‘Rather than users of technology we want the young people we work with to imagine themselves as the creator of the next Facebook or next generation smartphone, or better yet something unimaginable that is going to radically change the world.’ Professor Faron Moller, Director of Technocamps. 

While at the conference we were split up into groups to experience the types of workshops that are run, first off a couple of guys where explain how card magic ticks can explain coding each card trick had a type of code so when the ‘magician’ turn away and look back he would see the break in the code and know what card had changed, they had a few good tricks that did impresses children but I not sure if some for they adults in the room fully understood task let alone the children but is a unique way for explain coding and the children were engaged. 

Second was CoderDojo, CoderDojo is a free coding club run by volunteers, to teach students between 5- 17 years to mainly code but also how to develop apps, games, websites, programs and much more. In the workshop that I attended the student were experimenting with code, their task was to try out different codes which would guide there character through a maze. I was surprised at how effective this game was every pupil in the class was interested and their full attention was on their game, I think it left the pupils inspired and therefore was a great teaching tool.