The Teachers' Animation Toolkit

Materials (some of these are optional):
Black card, an overhead projector and white wall or screen, glue, 
scissors, paper fasteners or BluTak, coloured cellophane, fabric 
scraps, clear acetate sheets, glass paints, pipe cleaners, modelling 
sticks, permanent marker pens, camera and tripod linked to 
stop-motion software.

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Animation Styles
91
Resources:
Video: Dreams
by Holly Sandiford
Shadow animation: 
http://www.gagneint.com/Final%20site/insanelytwisted.com/main.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Meg_gZXcF44

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The Teachers’ Animation Toolkit
3.5 DRAWN ANIMATION
WORKSHEET: SIMPLE MOVEMENT CYCLES
Teachers’ note:
Hand-drawn animation is perhaps the style we are most familiar 
with, through the work of Walt Disney. If approached in this 
traditional way, it can be one of the most labour intensive and 
technically demanding of animation styles. However, short 
hand-drawn animations are easily achieved in the classroom. Make 
your fi gures simple and not too detailed. Perhaps start by doing a 
stick fi gure fl ick book. Start with line drawings, and focus on making 
simple movements and transformations work, before adding colour, 
shade, texture etc.
For these exercises, each student will need thin A4 photocopy paper 
or tracing paper, soft pencils and a ring binder with the standard 
2D mechanism. They will also need one of the two handouts: 
Hand-Drawn Animation in 4:3 Aspect Ratio or 16:9 aspect ratio, 
depending on the camera you are using (4:3 is for standard, 16:9 
is widescreen). The handout shows where the drawings can be 
placed on the page and still be seen on camera, without including 
the page edge. Note the black circles. This is where holes should 
be punched, so the sheets can be inserted in the ring binder, which 
will provide a means of registration. If you don’t have ring binders to 
hand, the sheets can be registered by placing them on cards with 
A4 guide marks at each corner. Another option is to order peg bars 
from an animation supplier.
It’s very important that students can see their previous drawing 
when they place the next sheet over it. They can use a light box or 
window to help if necessary.
Explain the technique of Inbetweening: Inbetweening is producing 
intermediate drawings in between the key drawings, which break the 
movement into stop-frame increments. Key frames are signifi cant 
poses in a character’s action, for example, the fi rst and the last 
position of a jump. Inbetweens are all of the drawings needed 
between the key frames to create the illusion of smooth movement.

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Animation Styles