• Scenario
• Planning
• Keeping track
• 
• Overview
• Gathering assets
• Proposal

• The Tasks
  • Task 1
  • Task 2
  • Task 3
• The other parts
• Building it
• 
• eportfolio
• Review

There are many ways that you might go about creating your animations and the task can be as easy or difficult as you want to make it. But, the principle behind them is the same. An animation is simply a series of still images which are played one after another at a speed which is fast enough to trick the eye into thinking it is a moving image.

A simple example might be an animated .gif image. These are normally quite short in duration, perhaps only a second or two long, so only a small number of individual frames are required. You will have seen examples of these on many websites.

Creating an animation is a three-step process:

• make up your mind what you want to do.
• create a good storyboard.
• create your animation.

You really don't need expensive software or equipment to produce a good animation. You can use timeline-based software or shoot still images using a webcam or digital camera to create the individual frames. You can also create the content for your frames using graphics which are computer generated or your own hand drawn artwork which is scanned in. Perhaps you could have a go with some sort of flexible modelling material, such as Plasticine or use figures such as Duplo or Stikfas.

You might also want to consider other software packages that allow you to create frame by frame animations using simple characters in the form of stick figures or 3D characters. These sites have some examples:

http://www.stopmotionpro.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=73

http://www.downs.kent.sch.uk/page_viewer.asp?page=Animations&pid=11

Remember we are not looking for the sort of animation that you would include if you were allowing text to spiral onto the screen as part of a presentation. You must not use presentation software to create the animation.