“Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions.” – Hayao Miyazaki

We’re nearing the end of remote learning for this school year. The final assignment, Stop Motion Animation, is meant to introduce many of my students to creating animation to harness their emotions and creativity through story telling. The posted lesson:

🎬MUST: Watch the video which explains the lesson.

🎬Once you’ve watched the video, make a plan for your video. Choose the materials you want to use.

🎬Invite your family to join you in making the video, if you’d like.

🎬Open/Download Stop Motion Studio to your iPad and open.

1. Experiment with the app before you commit to start shooting a video.

2. Shoot the video (one minute maximum).

3. Select the video. Click on the sharing arrow (sharrow) to send the video to your camera roll.

4. Turn in to Google Classroom.

I held back from using iPads for learning for the first two months of remote learning to help cut down on screen time, saving them for the final few assignments instead. As always my students took full advantage of this new dimension of creativity!

Look at this Star Wars based video by Lily T – complete with sound effects and narration:

Had we worked on this project in class, students would have had a full array of action figures, cards, Scrabble tiles, keyboard keys, Alpha-Bits, modeling dough and whatever else they could find in the room to work with. During remote learning, they were restricted to whatever materials they had at home. It didn’t stop them.

I first saw this one on a Thursday night at 9:00. It made my whole day:

This imaginative story as told by Alexa L:

Alexa’s artist statement: I used some of my toys for the characters, a few to help my character move or standup and some thread to help hold something. The story of my video is there is a man and a hedgehog, the hedgehog is the king though. The man steals king hedgehogs crown so king hedgehog calls his guards which are the other animals. The other animals chase the man down and he throws the crown backwards and runs while the guards chase him. The crown lands in front of the hedgehog and he puts it back on. I really like how it came out, I like the story but I also really like how it is funny too. If I did anything differently I would maybe choose a different character for the man because it was pretty annoying to get him too stand.

And this carefully crafted heartwarming message from Caelin F:

Caelin’s artist statement: For this I chose to just ask everyone how they where doing. I did this with penny’s, a lot of penny’s. I think it came out cool, if their was no shadow in the background it would look a bit better, but over all it is good. If I could do this again I would do it on a different desk.

Another very sweet video; this one by Sierra L:

Sierra’s artist statement: For this project, I used an app called Stop Motion and I took pictures every time I moved my main character forward a few inches. My main character is an astronaut bunny, and I filmed it so that the bunny walked forward, and then turned right and walked towards the camera. Then, a sign appeared and slowly it developed and in the end had a little message written on the note. I’m very happy with how it came out and if I had to do it differently, I would maybe try to make my video a little longer.

This video is appropriate to the week during which it was created – the week of social unrest and protests in reaction to the murder of George Floyd; may he rest in peace:

Last but not least, this collaboration by brothers with drama, action, sound effects, and titles via iMovie after using the Stop Motion app:

Here is the artist statement by Mark: My stop-motion story is about a man(Bob) who is driving his truck but it breaks down right when a car was speeding around the corner and hit his car he gets out of the car and he shouts at the driver(Joe) and gets his crowbar but as he does that a upgraded little tikes hits the other car and goes flying into the air and hits the ground hard but he(Little Timmy) is okay so gets his pan and hits the guy(Fred) living in the trailer (the trailer behind Joe’s car) then Bob does a jump and destroys a piece from Joe’s car then Joe gets his dart gun and aims at him while that happening a motorcycle comes and hits the truck and does a flip and lands on the trailer, Little Timmy went to help him(Hank) up and then Bob throws dynamite and everyone runs but turns out it was a dud then Little Timmy, Bob, and Joe all started to argue, but then an air plane crashes into the wreckage then Little Timmy and the girl(Clara) helps get the pilot(Karl) out of the wreckage and Little Timmy makes a stretcher out of the wreckage and put Karl on it, and if things couldn’t get worse it does a boat with animals sailing it then every thing explodes because the dynamite was a time bomb but it turns out to be a movie with a director, a camera person, and a mic person.

And here is Fady’s artist statement: My stop-motion story is about a man who is driving his truck but it breaks down right when a car was speeding around the corner and hit his car he gets out of the car and he shouts at the driver and gets his crowbar but as he does that a upgraded little tikes hits the other car and goes flying into the air and hits the ground hard but he is okay so gets his pan and hits a guy living in the trailer (the trailer behind the car that hit the truck) then the guy getting the crowbar does a jump and destroys a piece from the guy who crashed into his truck then the guy who crashed into him gets his dart gun and aims at him while that happening a motorcycle comes and hits the truck and does a flip and lands on the trailer, the guy with the little tikes car went to help him up and then the guy with the truck throw dynamite and everyone runs but turns out it was a dud then the little tikes guy, the truck guy, and the guy who crashed into the truck all started to argue, but then an air plane crashes into the wreckage then the little tikes and the guy who crashed into the truck helps and gets him out of the wreckage and little tikes makes a stretcher out of the wreckage and put him on it, and if things couldn’t get worse it does a boat with animals sailing it then every thin explodes because the dynamite was a time bomb but it turns out to be a movie with a director, a camera person, and a mike person.(By the way there is going to be a similar one with my brother because he was helping me with the production of this stop-motion)

You can see all of the Stop Motion Videos in this gallery on Artsonia