Animation Station
Have you ever wondered how animations are made? Have you ever wanted to make one yourself? Fear not, friends – it’s easy and fun! We’ll make some together.
The Animation Station is set up with three activities that make it easy to create your very first animation or explore your creativity if you’re an old pro. We’ll email you your creations when you’re done.
Activities (will all run concurrently):
1. Draw an animated figure that loops. Eadweard Muybridge created the first “moving pictures” based on series of photographs of horses running, acrobats turning somersaults and the like. We will have a series of black silhouettes of several Muybridge series printed out that you can trace onto tracing paper while adding your own flourishes — perhaps you’ll replace an acrobat’s head with the head of a chicken! Trace a series of 12-16 frames and we’ll photograph and animate them on an iPad. You’ll be able to watch your own animations right away.
2. Hoverfolk. This one is fun for kids. We will take a series of photos of you and your friends hopping into the air. Animate these together, and it appears you’re playing tag floating in the air!
3. Claymation / Whiteboard station. iPad apps with “onionskin” functionality let you make claymation or drawn whiteboard animations frame by frame, giving you the ability to see the outline of last photo you took for continuity. We’ll have a running whiteboard and claymation station and let any and all visitors animate a chapter in the story that unfolds.
The Animation Station will also project a running reel of the animations created through the day onto a projection screen.
