Flip Books

Flip Books

Here in the Greer Art Room, we are building on previous work with Thaumatropes and early animation to begin working on Flip Books. Yeah!  The hardest part in this process is seeing the forest through the trees. The concept of having 20 or more pages of art work to create was a deterrent to many but seeing the final product of others helped to keep them pressing on.
 The Pinterest Lesson Pages Automata-Kinetic-Art-Cool-Animation Pinterest Page have been  has been so much fun to explore. Nothing beats a visual description of what an actual flip book is and how to make it. As our final products have been assembled and stapled. We are now beginning to use awesome stop animation programs out there to have an alternative way to "animate" our flip books. So we are seeing the "flip" by hand and captured cyberspace on Youtube! Who wouldn't want their work to live forever. :)  Happy Flipping!

Thaumatropes & Pinterest

 For those of you who don't know me...I incorporate the site Pinterest in different ways while teaching art with my elementary students. I am such a visual person! What I share with students, in part, are examples of the work of many "anchor" artists i.e. the masters, along with real world examples of influences by that artist, time periods, themes, cultural ties, musical connections filled with sounds. Sure,  I could do a powerpoint but what's the fun of that anymore. Especially when you automatically have that same page available to share with followers including students and their families. So... the page I have for each lesson, is displayed on an interactive whiteboard at the beginning of class.
 that I am teaching filled with visual examples to coincide with our lesson of the day/week/semester.

Toy Kinetoscope made famous by Edison

Thaumatropes-My Pinterest Lesson Page  Last week I spent some setting the stage for a unit I am doing with students on animation. They are loving it!
 We talked about Thomas Edison and Kinetoscopes.
 I bought a book from B&N which included the tools to make a do it yourself Kinetoscope. This served to be an outstanding example of how an old school movie reels work. I also showed them a Chuck Close flip book purchased from my summer trip to the Smithsonian. This really helped to make it hit home. Now on to Thaumatropes. Hillarious hearing children say that word 3 times. Ha ha ha!!
Thaumatropes are old school animation toys made popular in the late 19th century with a basic concept. ...a picture on one side and an adjacent picture on the other. Animate the picture by adding the hand movement of rolling the device quickly. Attached are two examples from students in my classes. Fun fun fun! Now....onto Flip books...stay tuned!