Tech Salad

Last week I created a claymation clip for the first time. I knew I could use iStopMotion from Boinx Software, but I wanted to try it with what all teachers and students have available on their laptops.

I started with some borrowed modeling clay from the Art Department. I created a basic little character and posed him atop some books in my office.

Next I borrowed a document camera from the Media Center. I could have used any other camera, but the document camera had the advantage of being easy to set up without the need for a tripod. I took about 25 pictures as I adjusted the arms on my little clay man and changed the shape of the mouth by swapping out little pieces of paper.

I imported the pictures into iPhoto and then arranged them in sequence in an iMovie project. To “animate” my photos, I set the duration to .25 seconds, and reused some of the poses for repetitive motion.

Finally, I added introductory and a closing slides, some music, and a voice-over.

The entire process, which included locating and updating the drivers for my document camera, took approximately three hours.

When used with students, this would be a presentation technique that would foster higher-order thinking and creativity from planning to execution. And, a project like this would expose students to many technology tools working in concert to arrive at a very showy product.

 

 Clayman PUG Invitation [0:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 11:36 am and is filed under Cool Tool, podcast.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.