Tim Needles

In my many years of teaching art, I’ve found that working with animation consistently engages and excites my students. For an art teacher, this medium is a bit like modern-day magic. I recently taught a new animation project that resulted in successful learning and fantastic artwork in all of my high-school art classes, from studio art to digital media.

Animation Exercise One
I introduced a short animation lesson that utilizes a free online program called Brush Ninja (you can also use FlipaClip or FlipAnim), which I paired with the OK Go Sandbox, a free online resource that offers interdisciplinary lessons based on the incredible music videos of the band OK Go. 

I challenged students to create short six- to ten-second animations that we could combine into one longer collaborative work.

If you havenʼt seen OK Go’s videos, do yourself a favor and watch them. The members of the band, who originally met at an art camp, use extraordinary creativity to visualize their songs in unique ways, from a Rube Goldberg machine to filming in zero gravity on an aircraft in the upper atmosphere.

I used the video and OK Go Sandbox projects from the song “The One Moment” to introduce how animation works. It was effective for this purpose because it was filmed in 4.3 seconds on a specialty camera and then slowed down, allowing for great slow-motion shots.

I invited students to create a simple nine-frame animation to try out the process for themselves and learn about the Brush Ninja technology. The tool allows students to draw with a variety of brushes, copy and paste frames easily, and use an “onion skin” feature that displays a low-opacity version of the previous frame.

Roksolana S., The One Moment, grade nine.

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