lalow

My 11 year old has recently become interested in animation and has been making these little YouTube videos (http://m.youtube.com/channel/UC_cXF4sNbNi4jIFquc8wyvA). He comments that he doesn't know how to make the characters walk etc... Does anyone have kids interested in this and have any book recommendations or other resources? I'm kind of at a loss.

Meredith

A good starting point for animation is Scratch - it's a free platform for creating animation and games. It has good interactive tutorials and it's easy to use, although it does require some reading - it's real world, drag and drop programming, so someone will need to read the labels on the tags.

I wouldn't go to books as a starting point for learning about programming and animation, I'd go right to a platform - or at the very least a game with a "sandbox" feature. If not actually using the platform, watching online tutorials - there are a million tutorials on youtube.

---Meredith

lalow

> A good starting point for animation is Scratch - it's a free
>


Thanks, right now he draws the pictures in a draw program and puts them into a stop motion program (SAM animation)

Jody Gates

I don't have a book or a background in animation, but doing a quick search
on YouTube for [how to animate walking] comes up with a lot of great
tutorials right off the bat. From there some video creators reference books
with more information (if you really want books) or other websites with
more information. You will also start to see the preferred tools used by
these animators.

Hope that helps.
--
Jody


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Karen

>>>>Does anyone have kids interested in this and have any book recommendations or other resources? <<<<

We have enjoyed using SAM animation, which is a simple stop motion animation program:

http://icreatetoeducate.com/try-demo/

We were introduced to in through the Klutz book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Klutz-Book-Animation-Motion/dp/1591747333/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374965727&sr=8-1&keywords=klutz+stop+motion+animation

Scratch, as Meredith suggests, is wonderful as well.

Karen.

belinda dutch

Yes, the Klutz book company do a couple of excellent books on this. Visit their website or amazon. They are called 'animation' or something similar! My son has had hours of fun. They include a downloadable program which my son has used to great effect. There are also some great animation apps available for the iPad if you have one.

Belinda

Michelle

My son has really enjoyed using a free program called Minemator to make minecraft animations. He's also used scratch. Both programs are really different from each other, so it's probably worth having a look at a few different ones. There are also some good stop motion animation apps for the iPad/iPod. We used Stop Motion Studio Pro, which was quite affordable.

Michelle

sheeboo2

Check out ToonBoom and their different programs. The least expensive one is about $30-$40 and would be a good starting place. If you sign up on their website, you'll get discount offers. There is a 30-day free trial that's basically the full program. There's an iPad app too, which is fun.

My daughter received the more expensive program as a gift, but prefers Flash. I don't think she would have been able to navigate it alone, though, and she has a few years of experience with drawing software under her belt already.

Does she use a mouse or a stylus? While getting used to using a stylus is challenging, that might be something to look into as well. Once she gets used to it, she'll probably find it indispensable. My daughter actually games with hers too

Have her check out MAPs and MEPs on YouTube. They're Multi Animator or Editor Projects where a group of artists get together and each person animates a few seconds of a clip, kind of like an animated music video . It's a great way to work without getting burned out. If she likes Warrior Cats, there are a ton of Warrior MAP videos and people are always posting openings for new ones.

Brie