your free Animating Kids! secret recipes
Grab some clay, scissors and animate!
(Secret Recipe PDF Downloadable Links Are Under Each Video)
White Hat Recipe #5 - Speeding-up & Slowing Down
What You Will Learn
By either increasing or decreasing the spacing of a prop as you take each picture, you can create the illusion of speeding-up or slowing down. Only take one picture per space. It is normal to try to slow things down by taking multiple picture per move.
Why This Is Important
This is a fundamental concept animators must understand. It looks deceptively simple, but we find beginners do not "get it" until they try. The impulse will be to control the speed by taking fewer or more pictures between each move. Follow the recipe and see what happens.
White Hat Recipe #9 - Bouncing Ball
What You Will Learn
The bouncing ball recipe blends two basic animation concepts into one. Speeding Up & Slowing Down is added to a new concept - Squash & Stretch - and we create the illusion of impact and rebound. Try the Bowling Ball and Water Balloon recipe PDFs for variations on this theme.
Why Is This Important?
Spacing the ball along a curve with Speeding Up & Slowing Down spacing, while Squashing & Stretching requires concentration. This recipe blends two different animation ideas at the same time. Sometimes animators must keep track of 3, 4, or more animation concepts at the same time.
White Hat Recipe #14 - Throw with a Wind-Up & Follow Through
What You Will Learn
You will learn that many actions have three parts: The Wind-up, the Action, and the Follow-Through. This secret recipe breaks down the timing and spacing for the clay guy to toss an item off stage employing these new concepts.
Why Is This Important?
Professional animators call the Wind-up "anticipation". We use the term "wind-up" because young kids understand that it is a part of throwing a ball. We wind-up to throw a ball, to jump, to run, and even a sneeze. Timing is also a key element of this recipe. How long to hold a wind-up before the throw? Once you've tried with our timing, tweak our math and experiment with variations.
BONUS RECIPE
White Hat Recipe #25 - Talking: Lip-Synching
What You Will Learn
By animating different mouth positions in random order, you will create a “speaking loop” which will be copied and pasted to match or "lip-synch" to your voice-overs (VOs).
Why This Is Important
Traditionally, animators lip-sync mouth positions to pre-recorded voices. This takes a-long-time-to-do! We reverse the process by copying and pasting speaking loops to fit our VOs.
>Click Here To Download The Talking Recipe Worksheet<
“Animating Kids instantly turned our 4th grade class into an animation studio. No prep other than printing out the worksheet for our student-led groups. It was like we stepped into their Youtube world and started de-coding the secrets of fimmaking and digital storytelling. We projected their work on our smartboard and had our own film festival. Genius!”
