Creating Stop Motion Animation Characters

Kevin, of Kevin’s Meandering Mind, blogged last week about how his students created their stop motion animation clay figures. He actually did some simple stop motion animation to show how the characters developed from simple to more complex. It had never occurred to me to follow the creative process of how stop motion animation figures are developed, but it seems obvious (now) that by doing this you’re likely to push the kids to do more creative and interesting things with their characters.

It’s fun to watch the characters emerge from blobs of clay into little beings that seem to exude personality. Even if doing this process with my kids doesn’t make them thing and work harder, seeing how someone else did it quickly gets my creative juices flowing and that makes me a better teacher.