Talk:Animation

Volunteers

I'm interested in putting together a how-to on stop motion animation for the OLPC. I've dabbled and understand the basics, mostly from doing slave-labor for my professional-animator friend, who has also expressed interest. I am going to try to accumulate what I've found on the wiki here on the Animation page. Stay tuned for details. Specialization is for Insects 12:21, 4 October 2007 (EDT)

Format

I am thinking the format should be a series of short videos, or a picture based tutorial. I think that visual instructions would alleviate the need for translation and allow illiterate children use the material. *But* should this be a series of videos and/or images in a wiki format? What are your suggestions? Also, where would this sort of thing end up, and how would people find it? I think that by size it would fit the 20 mb limit for the XO. I need some sort of feed back here.

Hardware Specific Questions

I need more info on the specifics of animating using an olpc camera. Using a key on the XO to release the shutter can cause a lot of shake, blur, and other problems into the animation. If it's too much of a problem, then the shutter could be released via a second machine so as not to disturb the position of the camera -XO. This would probably be a good idea anyway to help make animation a group activity. Also, I have very little idea what's going on with the Record activity, or any sort of conversion from stack of photos to video. The Record page of the wiki is kinda shy of info.

Using one laptop to trigger another one is a good idea, but I think an easier solution would be to simply wait a short time after the key is released before taking the picture. This would reduce the immediate camera shake caused by pressing a button, although it won't eliminate the camera drift caused by accidentally moving the laptop base or hinge.

Alternatively, I suppose they might try using a USB mouse, if one is available, since this may reduce vibrations on the laptop itself. Presumably the school servers will ship with mice, so the school may have a few spare ones, especially if the mice turn out to be useful for other things like this activity. A wireless mouse or presenter's slideshow ticker would be ideal, but most schools will not have one available.

Or, you could try using an alternate input trigger: take a picture shortly after a hand or colored card is waved in front of the camera, or when the microphone detects a clap or whistle. This has the disadvantage that there are no obvious alternative controls for deleting a picture or previewing the animation so far, so these manipulations could also cause the camera drift mentioned above.

In the end, though, the best solution may be to ignore the problem, since most of the students will want just enough control to experiment with stop-motion animation, not recreate The Nightmare Before Christmas. —Joe 11:35, 12 October 2007 (EDT)

Animation Material

These children are probably not going to have Legos, barbies, or other pre-existing toys with armatures. So attaining materials is going to be a problem. Scrap wire isn't a bad medium for armatures, not ideal, but not bad. Ardmann animation (Wallace & Grommet, Chicken Run, etc) still use wire for a lot of minor characters (bunnies and the like). Play-dow (pretty simple flour-water-cornstarch formula I think) might work and I'll be playing with that in the next couple days. Who can I talk to about the release countries and materials that I can use?