TIME TO MAKE Animate anything literally To animate something is to bring it to life Makers can bring nearly anything to life from drawn images and photographs to clay sculptures and toys Animation is about experimentation and invention All you need is imagination and a willingness to try new things Read on and feel inspired to start your first animation project ILLUSION Animators create thousands of pictures known as frames that seem to move when shown in order very quickly The high speed at which the images are shown tricks the human eye into seeing the pictures move This is an optical illusion ANIMATION ALL AROUND From advertising to movies animation is all around us The art of animation is used to entertain educate and inform And it is great fun to createl For example computer and video games use animation techniques to create characters Some of today's most popular movies such as Inside Out and Frozen are animated There are also animations on the Internet that help to clearly explain difficult school subjects or how to fix things Each of these images show a horse jumping and each is slightly different If they were viewed individually one after another the result would be a moving
BEING A MAKER The maker philosophy is about working on projects and exploring possibilities It is about innovation learning from things that do not go quite according to plan and not giving up Collaboration or working with others as a team is a key part of the maker movement Even if you do not work on your animation projects with other makers sharing ideas offering and asking for feedback and celebrating each other s work will help you Succeed MAKERSPACES Makerspaces are places in your community where like minded people can go to share knowledge and resources be inspired and to bring their projects to life Other makers will be excited to hear about and help you with your animation projects and you can get involved in their projects too Makerspaces can be found in places like community centers and libraries GET STARTED Start animating with simple projects and then make them as complex as you want Adapt the suggested projects to suit your ideas Let your creativity flow and see where it takes you Be inspired by the history of animation and see how people have crafted success from the challenges and opportunities of this art form Get together with others to share ideas Together you may come up with ideas about animating all kinds of objects a
ALL ABOUT ANIMATION The idea of animation has existed for centuries but the techniques used to animate have changed and evolved Animation is a constantly developing art form This makes it perfect for makers who are interested in new challenges developing ideas and just giving it a shot EARLY DEVICES sentiment One of the first known devices or pieces of equipment used to create a sense of movement from still images was the Magic Lantern It is not clear who first invented it but this device was used by a German scholar Athanasius Kircher in 1640 He drew several images on glass slides and then inserted these into the Magic Lantern He moved the glass slides with string and when the drawings were projected onto a wall they gave the illusion of movement This engraving from the eighteenth century shows people looking at ghostly illusions created by a Magic Lantern They are shocked because the illusions look as though they are
ANIMATION IN TOYS Fast forward to the nineteenth century when inventors and scientists began to experiment with ways to make pictures move These inventions were often toys The Zoetrope was a popular toy in the nineteenth century It was shaped like a drum with an opening at the top Inside were hand drawn images When the child spun the drum around and looked through the slots on the outside the images appeared to move EDISON S KINETOSCOPE Thomas Alva Edison invented the kinetoscope in 1891 a box through which a reel of photos was passed at 46 frames a minute Edison asked New York newspaper cartoonist James Stuart Blackton to do a series of drawings Edison took photographs of them Edison worked with Blackton to release the cartoonist's 3 000 drawings as a sequence in motion It was called Humorous Phases of This is a sketch of a zoetrope Inside the toy are images of a running horse As the toy spins the horse seems to move Funny Faces Animation was on the move Be a Maker Animation is about putting together images so that they appear to move There are many types of animation created using different techniques Some are created on a computer others created using paper and some are created by using three dimensional 3 D models Whatever the technique used the effect is to create a sense of movement from still
