Hello, I'm Louisa from Little Angel Theatre, and I'm up in my attic today
to show you how to film a short animated scene inspired by the story of The Selfish Giant.
Now all animation, even the cartoons you see on TV, are lots and lots of photographs or drawings,
put one after the other so that they flow together to tell a story.
And that's what we're going to be doing today. We're going to create a picture,
we're then going to put our characters inside that picture,
and then we're going to take lots and lots of photos to create our animation.
Here's what you're going to need.
Number one: you're gonna need a digital camera or a smartphone that can take photos.
Number two: you're gonna need something to hold your camera,
so either a camera tripod or a stand for your phone.
Number three: to make the background that we're going to build our picture on top of,
we need either some paper, like coloured paper or card, or you can even use fabric, even a bedsheet.
Number four: we're gonna need some materials to build our picture with,
so next time you're out in the garden or if you're on a walk in the park,
just pick up a few bits and bobs like some pebbles or some twigs or some leaves,
bring them home and we're gonna use them to build our picture.
Number five: you're gonna need some characters to put in your picture
so you can actually draw your own characters and cut them out,
or like me you can find some free to use imagery online, print it, cut it out and use those.
I would say maybe glue your pictures to some card and then cut them out,
and that way they'll be extra strong.
Number six: you're going to need a computer or a laptop.
Number seven: you're going to need either some really simple video editing software,
or an app on your phone to put together all your photographs to make them into a film.
Now we'll speak about this later,
but most computers and laptops come with a very simple software
that is going to be absolutely fine for us to use.
And number eight: you might need an adult to give you a hand with some of the more technical stuff.
But what are we actually going to animate? So the first thing we need to do is plan our story.
Now I've got three questions that you can ask yourself to help you plan your story.
The first question is what story do I want to tell? Now for example, I've decided that I want to tell the story
of how the selfish giant's garden comes back to life when the children are playing in it.
Second question: what characters do I need? Well to tell this story,
I need the children and I've decided to have four children.
Number three: what do I want to animate? I want to see the children playing first,
and then I want to see the grass growing and then I want to see flowers appearing in the trees.
So that's what I'm gonna do. You might decide to do something slightly different,
and that's totally fine. Now that we've planned our story, the next stage is the most important - it is the setup.
Now when you're choosing somewhere to set up all your things to make your animation,
make sure you're gonna do it somewhere where you won't be disturbed or asked to move your things,
because animating actually takes a little bit of time,
and that's why I'm up in my attic because no one ever really comes up here.
So, when you've found your space where you're gonna set up, you need a table to lay your backdrop out flat.
You then need to set up your camera or your phone on a stand
so that it's pointing down as much as possible onto your backdrop.
Now the last part of our setup is the lighting. Now when you go to the theatre,
there's always loads of lights pointing at the stage to make sure that everything is really well lit up,
and the same is for animation, so we need to make sure that our whole scene is really well lit.
Now I'm really lucky and I got to borrow some of these big lights from my brother,
but you can still use any light that you can find around the house.
You can use a bedside table lamp, anything like that,
and just place maybe two of them either side of your animation to make sure it's really well lit.
And the next important thing is make sure that they don't move, because if they move between photographs,
the lighting's going to be really different between each photograph and we really don't want that
so make sure they stay exactly in place throughout the whole process.
Now we can build our picture using all the bits that we found in the garden,
so things like branches and twigs which can make really good trees,
and I might use my pebbles to put on the ground.
Just make sure that you're making your picture inside the frame of your camera and not outside.
But I'm gonna hold back with my grass and my flowers,
because I know that I want to see the grass growing in my animation
so I'm not going to put down the grass just yet. When we've built our picture, we can then put our characters in.
So I've got my four children and I'm gonna place them in my picture. And now we're ready to start animating.
So to start I'm going to take a photo of the very first image. Now I need to think what I'm gonna move first.
First I want to see the children playing in the garden for a little while,
so I'm going to nudge them just a tiny bit to show that they are playing.
I won't move them too much, only a little bit. Then I take a photo.
And this is what we're going to keep doing. We're going to move our characters a tiny tiny little bit
and then take a photo, and then move them a tiny tiny little bit again and take another photo.
So we're constantly taking photos but doing little tiny bits of movement in between.
I find it useful to use a twig to do the nudging.
So now, just like this, I'm gonna take about ten photos of these children playing
so we can see them playing in the garden for a little while.
And I'm just going to keep nudging, take a photo, nudging, take a photo, little nudge, take a photo.
Now I want to see the grass grow, so I've lined up my grass just out of the camera screen,
and slowly I can start to edge it upwards, taking photos as I go,
and not forgetting to keep the children playing so they don't just suddenly become statues when the grass grows.
And as the grass has finished growing, I want flowers to appear in the trees
so I'm going to add one flower at a time for each new photo.
So I'll add a flower here, and take a photo, add a flower here and take a photo, and so on.
And I won't forget to still keep the children alive and playing.
The more you have moving it becomes harder to remember how many things you have to keep nudging in between each photo,
so try and keep track of them all. Write a list if you have to.
And now that we've taken all those photos, I'm going to put them all together
so you can see them flowing as one. There we go.
But how do we get all our photos to play all in one go in a video just like that?
Now if you've got a smartphone you can actually download some apps
that will automatically turn your photographs into animation,
but please check with whoever pays the bill before you download anything to your smartphone.
I'm going to show you how to do it on a laptop.
Now most laptops actually come with free, very simple video editing software and that's what I'm going to use.
I'm going to use one that comes with Windows 10 and it's just called Video Editor.
If you've got an iMac they also have their own version that's very easy to use,
and it's perfect for what we're going to be doing.
First, import your photos to the software. Now you should have a timeline where you can drag and drop your photos.
Sometimes when you first put your photos onto the timeline and then press play,
you might notice that each photo will play for a long time, and that will make your animation slow and boring.
So what you need to do is highlight all the photos
and then I can change their duration from three seconds each to 0.25, I'd recommend.
Now this will make them much faster, so when I play we'll see each photo much faster
and we'll have a much better animation.
What's great about this editor is that you can delete any of the photos that you don't like,
and in fact you can even move them around and have them in totally different orders.
What's even better, is say if I want my children to be playing in the garden for quite a lot longer,
all I need to do is copy and paste extra photos. If you like you can add music,
or you could even record yourself narrating the story and put it on top of your photos to hear yourself telling the story.
I've decided to add some music and now that I'm finished, I'm gonna play for you my finished animation.
[ACOUSTIC GUITAR PLAYS GENTLY]
And when you think you've finished, you should be able to press play,
and watch your animation flow right from the start all the way to the end.
And the very last thing you need to do is save your work. You need to save it and then export it as a video file.
Then once you've got this video file you can send it to your friends or to your family,
or you can upload it to social media like Facebook or Twitter. If you upload it to social media,
please tag Little Angel Theatre and then we can see all your animations.
And then when you've done that you can do an animation of any story you like,
using anything you can find around the house.
Thank you so much, thank you for joining me in my attic.