For the Year 2005-2006 We received a grant from the Everett Education Foundation to support Claymation in my classes. I created “Sound Stages” with foam core. The students created backdrops and props. They also built their own clay characters using foil and cardboard for armatures. We used digital cameras on tripods to take still pictures and then edited them in Windows Movie Maker for the final productions.
For this grant the proposal was to have students adapt fairy tales into clay animation. The students rewrote the story and created a story board, clay characters, props and backgrounds. The next step was to take pictures of slow movement in increments. The pictures were then scanned and formatted, and imported into MS Movie Maker. Students edited the images into a very fast slide show that imitates stop-motion animation. They added titles and credits and music and sounds. The grant covered the purchase of claymation How-to books for my classroom library, a camera, tripod, clay, foil and set building supplies like foam core. Supplies already on hand included fabric, paints, yarn and other background and prop building supplies.
Some resources I created/adapted: ~note March 2010~ I have lost the digital copies of these resources and need to recreate them. So for now they are not here… if you really want to have one of these resources, email me!
- Claymation Checklist
- Claymation Tutorial using windows movie maker
- Claymation Rubric
Other Claymation resources on the web:
Some You Tube Claymation examples that are age appropriate: (These are not by my students. I selected them because they are simple and within the skill set of my students… believe me you can get lost for hours looking at animation on You Tube…so beware!)
- a clay guy eating ice cream,
- a clay bird crying,
- Some crazy fruit dancing A combination ot clay and objects
- this one is flat clay on a background starting with a guy that gets his head cut open!
- pogo the snail and steve dancing
Teacher Tube (http://www.teachertube.com/) is a great alternative to You Tube to see and post student work. Here are some claymation by students posted by their teachers.
