Photography Lessons For Kids: Stop Motion Animation

I’ve been teaching photography to kids for a few years now through after school classes as well summer workshops and a one week Photography Camp at the end of the summer. My after school class meets on Tuesdays for kids in 3rd to 5th grade. We are nearing the end of our Fall session – only two classes left before the holiday break.

Last week we did a fun activity – learning about Stop Motion Animation. I first tried this with the kids in my Photography Workshops and Camp this past summer and they had such a fun time I decided to introduce it to this class.

I break the class up into groups and give them each some play-doh. This is the game plan:

Step 1 – Come up with a SIMPLE Story

The kids try to be really elaborate but it’s not necessary. Actually the simpler the better especially when you’re first getting started.

Step 2 – Plan your shots

In this case we worked with play-doh so they had to decide what they needed. Did they need to make characters? What about a background? At what angle were they going to photograph each shot?

Step 3 – Start Shooting

Working as a team it works best to decide who is going to move the elements and who will be photographing them. The key is to keep your camera at the same angle for each shot and to make sure all is clear – no hand sin the way!

Step 4 -Create the Animation

Once all of the photos are taken, it’s time to upload them to a program such as iMovie, Final Cut or Windows Movie Maker

Here’s the final animation from last week’s class. This group decided to have a person on a bicycle eating ice cream. He was distracted because the ice cream was so good (it was probably peanut butter vanilla) that he didn’t notice the monster that was in front of him. The monster ate the guy and his ice cream and then spit out the bike.

Take a look…