A 4th grader animates a scene in stop motion with cut-paper characters.
For years, we've been experimenting with the 12 principles of animation, outlined by the grand old masters of animation at Walt Disney Studios. Our question has always been, "How can we teach this to kids as young as K-4 grades? It is quite complicated."
Thankfully, all the tech and production tools Disney used have migrated into apps on smartphones, tablets and laptops. Making something move on a screen today is child's play, technically.
But their theory, their concepts, and their motion math formulas have not migrated as well. By pounding these ideas into child-friendly bite-sized pieces over years, we have had to reimagine and rename many of them to be more accessible to younger kids with developing minds and motor skills.
Here are the original principles brought to us by the masters who created Snow White, Bambi and Fantasia, complete with our changes from years of testing and tweaking into age appropriateness:
Anticipation. turned into Wind-up! The principle of preparing the audience for an action before it occurs (see White Hat Recipes:10, 12,13,14). A sneeze has a wind-up just like throwing a ball does: Many motions start by going the opposite direction of the main action. Alway look for the wind-up in any animated bit.
Staging turned into The Rule of Thirds. Arranging the elements in a scene to create a clear, focal point of attention (Blue Hat Recipe 5: Layout). Kids love folding a paper into thirds, unfolding, and then organizing their scene on top. Cinematography 101. The horizon is on the bottom or top third. The characters are rarely in the middle of a screen. Put them in the right or left third to make things more interesting to the eye.
Straight ahead action and pose to pose turned into: In stop motion there is only straight ahead action. This principle of animating one frame at a time, discovering the performance from move to move. Since there is no frame to frame drawing, students just plow ahead with the best math-based guess as to how it all works out. (All Secret Recipes).
Follow through The principle of showing the motion after the main animated movement happens. Sometimes we call it the reset (White Hat Recipes: 11-13, 20). After a thrown ball or a sneeze, the thrower/sneezer follows through by resetting to a normal pose. Always look for follow through ideas after your character's main action!
Slow in and slow out turned into Slow Down & Speed Up: The principle of varying the speed from fast to slow, or from slow to fast for a more natural and believable movement (White Hat Recipe: 5). Such a simple idea, but crazy counterintuitive in practice. Timing is hard. Spacing and speed are timing practices. Kids get this faster than adults.
Arc turned into The Bouncing Ball: The principle of animating actions following a path that is curved rather than linear (White Hat Recipes: 8, 9, 11). We never mention the 'arc". We let them experience it as a natural progression from animating on a straight line. Bouncing ball recipes are arcing recipes.
Squash and Stretch: The idea that when an object impacts a surface, something has got to give (White Hat Recipes: 7, 8, 9,11) A water balloon squashes and stretches when it hits the ground. A basketball does too, but much less. The degree an animator squashes and stretches something ends up convincing the audience of it's mass and material.
Overlapping action: The principle of adding a second action to a main action (White Hat Recipes: 23a, 23b). Tarzan swinging on a rope. The main action is the rope swing. The overlapping action is the lag of Tarzan's body behind the rope. Waving with the hand is the same idea: first the arm waves, then the wrist lags behind in an overlapping action.
Timing turned into Spacing = Speed: The principle of adjusting or controlling the speed of an action by adjusting spacing between pictures. A simple concept that children grasp, curiously, much sooner than adults.
Exaggeration was dropped: The principle of exaggerating a movement or action for emphasis or comedic effect.. This happens naturally with kids. We found we don't have to teach it. emphasize it.
Solid drawing was dropped: With stop motion animating object negates the pressure to "draw good". Or, when awkward, poorly drawn cut-paper characters move, the kids don't care about the quality of the drawing,. They care that it comes to life through animation and that they can give it sounds or voices.
This all seems complicated. But by renaming things in a more accessible way we were thrilled as young media maker's grasped the vocabulary, posing and math concepts the old masters had discovered almost 100 years ago.
This was a huge leap forward for us,
When we laid out each concept with a piece of smushed clay on a table top, with paint by number style math formulas, they got it instantly.
So we discovered all the things are teachable at very young ages with objects and crude still drawings. With stop motion animation, kids didn't have to be "artists" to be animation storytellers.
The biggest leap was when we realized stop motion is a genius medium for the inclusion of all ability types. Creative types could invent the look, math types could map out the frame rate requirements, writers might draft dialogue, engineers build the sets, and tech nerds interface with the tech. Stop motion demands a wide range of skills. Even if those skills are not dominant in a group, we've imagined the most basic way of doing each.
Our discoveries turned into Animating Kids, a streamlined framework that wrangles these concepts into group centered, project-based learning experiences. The assumption was that this needed to be for non-film makers. And the assumption was that non-film maker adults would be teaching animation. Hence the pre-planned, step-by-step, scaffolded secret recipes.
For years now, parents and administrators have seen kid's enthusiasm for media skills education, and teachers who adopt our system look like geniuses for baking it into their classroom culture.
We live in an amazing age. Video has become the dominant communication medium. If you are teacher or media specialist, we hope you don't miss out on this opportunity to give your students the ability to create their own animated stories. Making meaning with media skills is a must for their future!
Even if you use something other an Animating Kids, any move in this direction will excite and animate your students. Turning them into active media producers instead of just passive viewers will make a huge impact in their lives. It changes their DNA!
Bon Animate!
The Team at Animating Kids
You can watch some intro videos and scan all our lesson titles here.