Not sure what sort of animation you're envisaging here. If you're simply
talking about displaying a sequence of still images of children's work,
possibly with text annotations, and you want to keep things simple, you
could use Microsoft PowerPoint, or OpenOffice Impress. You can do some
fairly fancy things with those, but I wouldn't really call them animation.
If "bringing taxidermy to life" means stop-frame animation of stuffed
animals, it gets much more complicated. For the software, there are
dedicated programs like Dragon Stop Motion, Stop Motion Pro, and a host of
others, but you can get going with most video editing packages (such as the
"lite" versions of Vegas and Premiere, or Serif MoviePlus). Take a sequence
of stills with a digital camera, import them into the timeline, and set each
one to display for one frame, or two frames for a jerkier effect (well, "The
Clangers" got away with it.). Then export as a video.
You'll need to mount your camera on a tripod, use manual exposure, set up
consistent lighting, and take pics at low resolution to save disc space. The
resolution of non-widescreen PAL video is 720x576 pixels, so there's no
point using anything much more than that unless you intend doing a digital
zoom later.
The main problem will be the model. Most taxidermy is rigid, and to get any
interesting motion, you'd need a model with articulated joints. It would be
an interesting challenge for a taxidermist, and it might work very well, but
there are no doubt several good reasons why Aleksandr isn't a real meerkat.
(Actually, he's probably created entirely in software, but that's just
cheating). :-)
Best wishes,
Paul Baker
Supreme Commander
Diabolus in Musica
Historical musicians in costume
Replica musical instruments and historical artifacts
Interactives, websites, audio & video work
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www.diabolus.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "lindsey milnes" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2010 11:45 AM
Subject: Simple Animation Software?
Does anyone have a recommendation or experience of using simple animation
process or software? The process will be used in CPD workshops for upper
Primary, lower Secondary teachers.
The theme is Biodiversity and the idea is to bring taxidermy to life through
animation amongst other objectives. The programme would need to capture
still images (children's drawings and collage) and then present them on
screen(without any editing if possible).
Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Lindsey Milnes.
Arts & Heritage Assistant,
Touchstones, Rochdale.
Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone from Virgin Media
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