 
There are many forms of animation, and even the oldest are still being used today. The latest movies created using CGI require powerful computers and thousands of hours by creative teams of animators. The same is true of cartoon movies by companies like Pixar and Disney. However, some of the methods still in use are easy to do in simple form, and are a definitely a lot of fun. On these pages I'll show you how we made digital animations in Jr High computer classes using school computers, some inexpensive or free software, and a video camera or cell phone. Check out the two types of animations that students experimented with:
Both types of animation require special software. In order to test your series of drawings or photos to make sure they transition smoothly from one to the next, you need a good image viewer. I use Irfanview, a highly acclaimed program that is an incredibly useful tool for working with photos of all kinds, and it's free! We used in on our school's computers for many years.To string your images together, set the timing, and create a single GIF file, you will need GIF creation software. I use GIF Construction Set Professional, which isn't free at about $30 CDN, but is the best piece of software available for this task. You can check out some free ones, such as 'Photoscape', here. I've used Photoscape and it works well. |