Curriculum Ideas
Creating amazing stop motion animations is easy; all you need is a Mac, iStopMotion and a camera. iStopMotion is easy to use, and there are no complicated set-up process. Children of all ages can learn to create animations in minutes. You can animate any still object that you like: clay (like in Wallace & Grommit), Lego, paintings, paper or record fascinating time lapse movies — the possibilities are endless. Find some ideas how to use iStopMotion here and see what schools create on the Education Example Page
Arts
- Create characters out of clay, paint a background, model landscapes…
- Promote art at your school by creating advertisements
- Demonstrate how colors are combined
General
- Write a poem and then create a clay animation to explain or enhance it
- Animate a fiction story
- Create a clay animation of a historic event
- Illustrate vocabulary words, idioms, and more
- Clay characters eat their lunch at a French Café while conversing in French for French class.
Maths
- Create an animation which demonstrates the concept of fractions
- Use clay animations to demonstrate how to plot coordinates
- Demonstrate with clay how concepts and equations are solved
Sciences
- Show the probability density of an electron in a hydrogen atom
- Create a animation which demonstrates a plant's growth
Time Lapse
- The physics class of Mr Church at Littleton High School, New Hampshire, created a system that heats the sidewalk thus melting the snow using the waste heat from the school's boiler. iStopMotion was used to collect data by time lapse recording the thermometer so that the students didn't have to watch it all the time. They also created a time lapse movie during a snow storm showing how the system performed.
More Ideas
- Record changes in clouds
- Observe the chemical dissolution of different metals in acids over time
- Watch living cells in time lapse movies
- Observe ants feeding or tunnelling in an ant farm
- Observe the growth of plants or germination of seeds
- Observe how people use public spaces
- Observe a piece of art as it is being created (e.g. painting, sculpture)
Further Information
- iStopMotion training and courses are offered by South Street Studios, UK. Oscar Stringer, the director and founder has developed a strong and reliable reputation for providing opportunity for students of all ages to discover the art and craft of model animation.
- Ani-mats — model making made easy! Wipe clean playmats featuring step-by-step guides to creating your own amazing animation models by ICT-Links, UK
- Examples and tips from Digital Media.
