With the celebration of Hispanic Hertigate Month from mid-September to mid-October, the students have taken a short break from 3D Printing to focus on one of the most fun and creative forms of animation, Stop Motion. For this project, I have chosen to focus on Claymation, where students will make clay puppets and various 3D props to create an animated short. Students are often drawn to stop motion as it allows them to work with their hands- cutting, pasting and molding, filming and editing to create their very own film.
As a class, the students worked together brainstorming ideas to create a story based on their chosen historical figure. One of the most challenging portions of stop-motion animation is teamwork. Each student is learning how to create a project that is a representation of the entire class, not just a singular person. The students overcame their first challenge in the story building portion of the project. Students were taught how to create to plot diagrams for the early stages of story development. They later moved on to creating detailed storyboards, outlining their entire story. In the coming week, students will focus on character, prop and set building. They will get a first-hand experience working with an introductory wire armature to create their clay character. They will also be diving into the stop-motion software, iStopmotion, where they will create mini test animations. I cannot wait to share more as their project develops.
DIVAS (Digital Interactive Visual Arts Sciences) for Social Justice aims to bridge the digital divide by combining media literacy and cultural awareness along with a vast understanding of technology to encourage young women in under served communities to pursue careers in computer science and new media.
