You’ve no doubt seen the recent news about the discovery of a giant prehistoric claw, from a 2.5m sea scorpion (Jaekelopterus rhenaniae if you must know). BBC News has the full story, but suffice to say the creature evolved about 400 million years ago and probably lived in a river or swamp.

The find has led to speculation that ancient invertebrates were much larger than previously thought (something to do with elevated oxygen levels in the atmosphere). And there was me thinking that all those horrible insects in King Kong were just fantasy – watch this space for discoveries of giant ape jaw-bones.

In the meantime, here’s an animated version of the scorpion alongside a human – roughly to scale, though the human looks a bit confident for my liking.

Here’s a bit of fun for Hallowe’en… I’m not quite sure why the pumpkin is jumping on the skeleton, but it makes a nice noise.

The Incy Wincy Spider animation that my son and I made has been a (small) hit on YouTube, with over 2,000 views so far, a five-star rating, and some nice comments:

cute it made my little 3 year old cousin really happy lol shes so cute singing to it and i luv this guys acent i luved it so cute

‘Need to see it again’ said my 2 year old daughter as she recited it along with the lovely voice on your animation. Such a clear, clever animation, thank you

Inspired by the success of this animation,we decided to try and animate another classic nursery rhyme: Three Blind Mice. As before, we used Moovl to create the drawing and animations, then screen-captured them and edited them into a movie using Windows MovieMaker.

The whole experience was definitely fun. As ever, there were creative concerns about whether the sequel could live up to the success of the first movie, but luckily we managed to reunite the same team of artists. In fact I’d like to think that this is of similar quality as Godfather II (generally acknowledged as better than Godfather I). Although perhaps the casting of family members is more akin to Godfather III.

I’ve recently discovered a couple of interesting and useful websites that discuss animation in more detail, particualry as it relates to the primary curriculum.

First of all, there is the Film Education site, which has a specific section on using animation in the classroom. The site provides an introduction to animation and gives project ideas across Key Stages 1 and 2. It also includes a historical context. As the site says:

Animated films and the skills needed to produce them can provide a stimulus to learning across the curriculum – especially in Art and Design, History, ICT, Science and Literacy.

Also, interesting to note their definition of ‘animation’, which I think makes it clear that the graphical skills required are secondary to the imagination and creativity of the animator:

‘Animation’ is a performing art rather than a graphic art. The drawings and models replace actors and actresses, so when children are creating their own animation it is important to approach it through the creative skills they would use in drama rather than graphical skills.

The second site I found – Learn-ICT -  also has an animation section, with some fantastic examples of children’s stop-motion films in the animation gallery. I particularly liked The Spider!

Inspired by a colleague who drew the Moovl Lisa, I added my own version of Munch’s The Scream. I can’t decide whether the animated version is more disturbing than the original.

Perhaps The Girl with the Pearl Earring would have been better.

I’ve added a Flickr RSS feed on the sidebar (on the right-hand side). This will show regularly updated still images from Moovl (all my own work at the moment).

If you want to see the full set of images you can click on the ‘more photos’ link in the Flickr panel, or if you don’t want to go to the trouble of scrolling down, then you can click here.

The still photos don’t really give the full sense of Moovl because… err… they don’t move. But having said that, they’re still quite cute.

I’ve been experimenting recently combining Moovl with other creative tools to make ‘mini-animations’.

The drawings and animations in this film were done by my son (who is 8) in Moovl. We then screen-captured them using CamStudio and imported them into Windows MovieMaker. My son added his own voiceover, and I helped with the transitions, titles and credits.

Because the animation tools in Moovl are intuitive and designed with children in mind, my son got to grips with them immediately. The other tools we used would probably require teacher-intervention to get the best from them, though I’m sure there are movie-making tools designed specifically for younger children.

Although this was an ‘after-school’ activity, it does help to incorporate the use of ICT into other curriculum areas, for example art and design (eg pupils apply their experience of materials and processes, including drawing, developing their control of tools and techniques). Simon Mills’s ICT Inspirations blog has lots more thoughts and examples of using animation and film-making in the primary curriculum.

Anyway here is our effort… it may not be Oscar material yet, but we had a lot of fun (and a little learning) along the way.

Inspired by Wimbledon, though not necessarily the British performances, I used Moovl to create a little game myself. First of all I drew the two players, then a ball (which I made very bouncy). Then I animated the two tennis rackets and let them get on with it.

Although mainly for fun, this activity shows how the physical properties of Moovl (like the hardness of the rackets, or the heaviness of the ball), can interact quite nicely with the animation effects (the loop of the players’ shots).

Next time I’ll add some rain…

Thanks to Andy Polaine’s Playpen blog for pointing me in the direction of this very fun prototype from Philips called Drag and Draw.

The video shows a child interacting with a set of technology that allows them to draw objects on the wall with ‘light’. In addition, a little like Moovl, the pictures can then be moved around. Unfortunately it’s not clear exactly how all the pieces of technology work together to create the effect, but visually it’s stunning.

Also reminded me of MIT Media Lab’s I/O Brush.

Thanks to Simon Mills’s ICT Inspirations blog for pointing me in the direciton of Pivot Stickfigure Animator.

It’s a very simple program that lets you move a stick figure around one frame at a time and record the sequence – like an on-screen flick-book.

It has a very different feel from the Moovl animation tool (which is more like a training tool – just move the objects where you want them to go), but nice and simple all the same.