And then I thought maybe someone else would like to see it to. So here it is.
Nothing fancy you know...
Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Hmm..
..wasn't sure if this would work, but looks like it has. Just got this from www.photobucket.com, which looks like a website where you post up your photos and do all sorts of stuff with them and then everyone can see them and nick them. Er..or maybe I got the wrong end of the stick. Anyway I thought ds1 would like this little animation which was made by someone and posted on photobucket.
And then I thought maybe someone else would like to see it to. So here it is.
Nothing fancy you know...
And then I thought maybe someone else would like to see it to. So here it is.
Nothing fancy you know...
Monday, 4 August 2008
Animation on the big screen and blackberry picking
Last night we went to see a showing of ds1's animation at a local cinema. The screening is a showcase of the minifilms and other productions created during a week of workshops for local children and teenagers. During two days of workshops Ds1 had worked on an animation called 'Hot hot hot' with a group of children, in which the sun melts the earth and is then put back together by 'Magnet Man'. The kids had had great fun using some software to 'melt' pictures of world landmarks. The remaining animation had been made with plasticine figures, hand-drawn backdrops and stop-frame animation.
Picked the first two tomatoes yesterday too. I'm hoping this year's crop will be better than last year's when the tomatoes suffered so badly from blight in the wet weather that we hardly salvaged anything. Must remember to make up some tomato feed: at the allotment I've got some rotting seaweed in a sack that I haven't dared open up (I can smell it from 10 feet away!) which would make a good feed if I diluted it. It's been there almost a year and should have stewed nicely by now. A bit too nicely. Of course the coward's way out would be to go and buy some commercial tomato feed, but that wouldn't be very 'organic' or frugal. Maybe I'll just wait until I have a bad cold and can't smell anything!
Finally managed to get to my sewing machine and finish a cushion cover. Looks great on the sofa, though the dogs seem to have a fondness for it and it didn't take them long to cover it in dog hairs. Just another 7 cushion covers to go...
Not quite Blackberry and Apple Crumble...yet
Picked the first two tomatoes yesterday too. I'm hoping this year's crop will be better than last year's when the tomatoes suffered so badly from blight in the wet weather that we hardly salvaged anything. Must remember to make up some tomato feed: at the allotment I've got some rotting seaweed in a sack that I haven't dared open up (I can smell it from 10 feet away!) which would make a good feed if I diluted it. It's been there almost a year and should have stewed nicely by now. A bit too nicely. Of course the coward's way out would be to go and buy some commercial tomato feed, but that wouldn't be very 'organic' or frugal. Maybe I'll just wait until I have a bad cold and can't smell anything!
Finally managed to get to my sewing machine and finish a cushion cover. Looks great on the sofa, though the dogs seem to have a fondness for it and it didn't take them long to cover it in dog hairs. Just another 7 cushion covers to go...
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
ARe you My MUMMY?
I think perhaps my children have been watching too much tv.
When my 4 year old is cheerfully reenacting some of the scariest scenes from the latest Dr Who series, I should probably be taking a good look at my parenting, or lack of it :) I think it's been a gradual progression, a slow slipping into permissiveness that has come with warmer weather. Yes, that's it, blame it on Summer...
Only a few months ago I was unhappy with the boys watching Dr Who, feeling it to be a bit too creepy for them to watch before bedtime. Dh however had, on the sly, been letting them watch Dr Who while I was out at work. Now it seems that dd1 has been watching it too. Hence the reenactment seen in the video below. For those of you not familiar with this episode of Dr Who, it's the one with the creepy people in gas masks that have grown onto their faces, who wander around saying 'Are you my mummy?'
Are you my mummy?
Reenacting an episode of Dr Who. Well, at least it shows their creativity and imagination! (And yes, that is a Listerine box)
Up in the apple tree (trying to get away from creepy dd1!)
Ok, ok, I'm your Mummy. Now go away, you're scaring me!
Not that my kids get creeped out by anything on tv/DVD it seems. Most of the things that would have made me pee my pants as a kid get calmly absorbed by them without any apparent consequences! Is this a symptom of modern society or am I just a bit of a woose? Probably the latter. I can't even watch a black-and-white 'B' movie without getting edgy and I'm always wary of seeing new films at the cinema; best to get a review from a friend first before I scare myself to death. Perhaps I should just stick to PG films!!
As I'm typing this blog entry the kids are watching 'Dr Who Confidential' that I recorded last night for them. Dr Who Confidential shows how a particular episode, usually the one shown immediately before, is made. I think the kids are interested in how the programme - and programmes in general - are made. Perhaps that's why these things aren't so frightening for them: they have a good realisation of what's fictional and what's not, how these things are created in a studio and how this translates to the screen.
Ds1 in particular is quite interested in film making and animation. He's signed up for another animation workshop in a week or so's time - using clay/plasticine to make models. It's part of an annual film and animation week that we have locally.
Took the kids to the library this afternoon. Picked up one of their 'let's persuade kids to read over Summer' schemes. Obviously it's not called that, it's called something more catchy like 'Team Read' and comes with a sporty/footbally poster to put your stickers on. Of course, it's pretty obvious to me that it's biased towards boys - the assumption being that boys don't read so much and need more encouragement. So, what is it about these do-goody government people that they assume that all boys are interested in sport/football? I'm sure if they actually did some research they'd find that their target group - i.e. the kids, predominantly boys, who aren't deemed to be reading enough or early enough - like a whole range of different things, not just blooming football!!!.
Anyway, the gist of the scheme is that the kids are encouraged to get stickers for each 2 books (of their choice) that they read. My kids have never been that interested in previous years - they're not really star chart /sticker reward sort of kids - and I haven't made them do it, cos I think it's a bit lame. They're bright enough to realise it's just a trick - a very transparent one - to get kids to read books. Still, I think ds2 might be interested this time and this might motivate ds1 to do the same, so I got packs for all of them just in case they are overtaken with a sudden urge to read books for stickers. I'm sure there'll be a few parents with school kids who'll be virtually ramming the books down their kids' throats just to get them to read over the holidays and get their stickers. I suppose I would have done the same 4 or 5 years ago too. Ah the wisdom of experience, especially home education experience...
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
You call THAT snow??!!
I've just noticed that I haven't posted any photos on the blog recently. Does that mean we haven't done anything worth photographing? Perhaps.
It did snow today, however. Did I take a photo of it? No.
We were sat watching rubbish morning tv in the lounge when ds1 tore down the stairs and shrieked 'it's snowing it's snowing!'. So we all rushed out the front door into the freezing cold front garden and stood there looking hopefully into the sky. And yes, with a bit of imagination, there were incy wincy teeny little dandruff flakes of something cold and icy. Not exactly snow, but near enough. A few schoolkids trudging past our house to school gave us a rather strange look. I suppose our ragged half-dressed bunch stood in their socks on the garden path running around trying to eat the non-existent snow flakes falling down, was probably a rather bizarre sight. At least it's a bizarre sight if you don't belong to our family. If you belong to our family then bizarre is relative.
A short while later on the way to get in the car for preschool, poor dd1 let out a sigh of disappointment, ' but I thought there'd be heaps and heaps of snow, where's it all gone?'.
Ah well. Life is full of little disappointments and snow in southern England is definitely one of them. The sky is grey, the wind is biting, we are all freezing our little wotsits off, and the only demonstration we have of exciting - or even slightly interesting - weather is a few pathetic flakes of vaguely cold stuff that disappear as quick as bubbles blown from a cheap pot of bubble mixture.
I suppose being a home educator I could have used it as the start of a discussion on the water cycle or global warming. In fact I should be full of guilt that we didn't go on to perform some scientific experiment freezing and thawing water, or look through an atlas at places in the world that have proper snow. But we were late, it was cold and I was grumpy (probably because we were late and it was cold). Besides, if I turn every conversation into an educational example my children will stop listening to me altogether. Methinks perhaps it's already too late.
Anyway there has been progress in the household of a sort. Ds1 and 2 have been making a stopframe animation using their playmobil and an animation package that we've hooked up via my laptop to a basic webcam. We've had the package for some time, but only really used the drawing aspect of it. It took a bit of getting used to, and the kids had an annoying habit of keep clicking buttons and copying over frames that they'd already done (grrr), but I think the result was pretty good for a first attempt. Unfortunately it's meant that my laptop, my nice shiny all-for-me laptop, has now been touched by small people from the planet child. I'm not sure this is a path I wish to go down.
I suggested to the kids that they should send in their animation(s) to Blue Peter, with an accompanying film about how they made it, in an attempt to get a blue peter badge each. I'd like to say that this suggestion is entirely altruistic, but it isn't because there would be some rather good financial benefits for moi. Free entry for the kids to places like Legoland would be just one of the bonuses of being a Blue Peter Badge holder and seeing as last year I used up loads of Tesco vouchers to pay for their year's passes, I have an incentive to make sure that I don't have to do the same again this year. I might even be able to use the Tesco vouchers for something for me (whoa now that would be a novelty).
So, did they like my suggestion? Well, not much. It was met with what I can only describe as 'lukewarm' enthusiasm. In fact even the word enthusiasm is probably a bit strong. But, hey, I'm a mother and ve have vays of making zee little people do what ve vant them to.
So plan A is that I'll nag them in the hope that they might eventually they might give in (possibility it might work, but it might just make them even more resistant).
Plan B I could just send it in myself pretending that it was from them, but that would probably be morally wrong (if I had any morals left).
Or for plan C I could go for the non-coercive method , i.e. give in and just blow all my Tesco vouchers on this year's passes.
Ah, the difficult decisions forced upon us poor parents.
It did snow today, however. Did I take a photo of it? No.
We were sat watching rubbish morning tv in the lounge when ds1 tore down the stairs and shrieked 'it's snowing it's snowing!'. So we all rushed out the front door into the freezing cold front garden and stood there looking hopefully into the sky. And yes, with a bit of imagination, there were incy wincy teeny little dandruff flakes of something cold and icy. Not exactly snow, but near enough. A few schoolkids trudging past our house to school gave us a rather strange look. I suppose our ragged half-dressed bunch stood in their socks on the garden path running around trying to eat the non-existent snow flakes falling down, was probably a rather bizarre sight. At least it's a bizarre sight if you don't belong to our family. If you belong to our family then bizarre is relative.
A short while later on the way to get in the car for preschool, poor dd1 let out a sigh of disappointment, ' but I thought there'd be heaps and heaps of snow, where's it all gone?'.
Ah well. Life is full of little disappointments and snow in southern England is definitely one of them. The sky is grey, the wind is biting, we are all freezing our little wotsits off, and the only demonstration we have of exciting - or even slightly interesting - weather is a few pathetic flakes of vaguely cold stuff that disappear as quick as bubbles blown from a cheap pot of bubble mixture.
I suppose being a home educator I could have used it as the start of a discussion on the water cycle or global warming. In fact I should be full of guilt that we didn't go on to perform some scientific experiment freezing and thawing water, or look through an atlas at places in the world that have proper snow. But we were late, it was cold and I was grumpy (probably because we were late and it was cold). Besides, if I turn every conversation into an educational example my children will stop listening to me altogether. Methinks perhaps it's already too late.
********************
Anyway there has been progress in the household of a sort. Ds1 and 2 have been making a stopframe animation using their playmobil and an animation package that we've hooked up via my laptop to a basic webcam. We've had the package for some time, but only really used the drawing aspect of it. It took a bit of getting used to, and the kids had an annoying habit of keep clicking buttons and copying over frames that they'd already done (grrr), but I think the result was pretty good for a first attempt. Unfortunately it's meant that my laptop, my nice shiny all-for-me laptop, has now been touched by small people from the planet child. I'm not sure this is a path I wish to go down.
I suggested to the kids that they should send in their animation(s) to Blue Peter, with an accompanying film about how they made it, in an attempt to get a blue peter badge each. I'd like to say that this suggestion is entirely altruistic, but it isn't because there would be some rather good financial benefits for moi. Free entry for the kids to places like Legoland would be just one of the bonuses of being a Blue Peter Badge holder and seeing as last year I used up loads of Tesco vouchers to pay for their year's passes, I have an incentive to make sure that I don't have to do the same again this year. I might even be able to use the Tesco vouchers for something for me (whoa now that would be a novelty).
So, did they like my suggestion? Well, not much. It was met with what I can only describe as 'lukewarm' enthusiasm. In fact even the word enthusiasm is probably a bit strong. But, hey, I'm a mother and ve have vays of making zee little people do what ve vant them to.
So plan A is that I'll nag them in the hope that they might eventually they might give in (possibility it might work, but it might just make them even more resistant).
Plan B I could just send it in myself pretending that it was from them, but that would probably be morally wrong (if I had any morals left).
Or for plan C I could go for the non-coercive method , i.e. give in and just blow all my Tesco vouchers on this year's passes.
Ah, the difficult decisions forced upon us poor parents.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
All quiet on the Home Ed Front...
Well, it's been a deliberately quiet few days wrt home education. After a visit from friends and their daughter 2 weeks ago and some rather intense socialising the previous few weeks (enough to put paid to all the 'what about socialisation' quesions!) we had a week of hiding at home during our local half term, avoiding the crowds.
That's not to say that the kids haven't been occupied. Ds1 and 2 spent a couple of saturdays at a local free animation class. I'd seen the poster the day before the first session and on finding there were hardly any children attending (why?) I phoned round some of our local home educators who soon filled the group with their kids. As always, the boys' animation had a rather violent theme - there's usually a killer mutant 'something' trying to take over the world - but having seen a quick draft version of their mutant killer rabbits (in plasticine) it looked fantastic for 8 hours of teamwork. There's still the sound to be edited on, apparently one of the adults does this, and then we will get to see the finished result plus other children's efforts during a screening this Saturday.
I need to get my head around the couple of animation programmes we have on our pc at home. the kids use two drawing ones (from http://www.2simple.com/). There is also the facility to do stopframe animation using one of our basic windows packages, but I'm yet to work out how. They're all fairly clunky programmes and our pc seems to struggle with anything at the moment, so it may be a case of having to buy a new pc for the kids before we can get anything to work. As I have a new laptop my personal urge to buy a new efficient pc is rather diminished, but I think there will come a point when the kids are totally fed up with it's constant misbehaviour and refusal to play their favourite games.
After a long period of little structured 'work' I'm hoping to start up 'The story of the world' again soon, a really good children's history book/curriculum. Although I've been progressively getting rid of workbooks off the shelves, and we're mostly autonomous in our educational style, I think the kids are missing a bit of structure and direct adult interaction. Ds1 even asked when we were going to do some more history, so I think that's probably a good sign (there are obviously some positive advantages to leaving them to their own devices for a few months). Japan during the middle ages was our last theme that we were working on and there's still plenty of scope for doing more on this. I've plans to look at Japanese art and also try out some Haiku (have I got the spelling correct?) with the kids. We might even get to do some reading about Samurai. Then I have ambitions for the kids to go sketching in a local museum, an anthropological museum that has literally thousands of little and large artefacts from all over the world and I'm sure they have a Samurai 'outfit'. Is 'outfit' the right word? - uniform?- oh I dunno. At least if they have weapons of some sort it will please the boys. Of course these are all possible plans and in the world of home educating very little goes according to plan. FLEXIBILITY and the patience of a Saint seems to be the key to a calm home educating life.
That's not to say that the kids haven't been occupied. Ds1 and 2 spent a couple of saturdays at a local free animation class. I'd seen the poster the day before the first session and on finding there were hardly any children attending (why?) I phoned round some of our local home educators who soon filled the group with their kids. As always, the boys' animation had a rather violent theme - there's usually a killer mutant 'something' trying to take over the world - but having seen a quick draft version of their mutant killer rabbits (in plasticine) it looked fantastic for 8 hours of teamwork. There's still the sound to be edited on, apparently one of the adults does this, and then we will get to see the finished result plus other children's efforts during a screening this Saturday.
I need to get my head around the couple of animation programmes we have on our pc at home. the kids use two drawing ones (from http://www.2simple.com/). There is also the facility to do stopframe animation using one of our basic windows packages, but I'm yet to work out how. They're all fairly clunky programmes and our pc seems to struggle with anything at the moment, so it may be a case of having to buy a new pc for the kids before we can get anything to work. As I have a new laptop my personal urge to buy a new efficient pc is rather diminished, but I think there will come a point when the kids are totally fed up with it's constant misbehaviour and refusal to play their favourite games.
After a long period of little structured 'work' I'm hoping to start up 'The story of the world' again soon, a really good children's history book/curriculum. Although I've been progressively getting rid of workbooks off the shelves, and we're mostly autonomous in our educational style, I think the kids are missing a bit of structure and direct adult interaction. Ds1 even asked when we were going to do some more history, so I think that's probably a good sign (there are obviously some positive advantages to leaving them to their own devices for a few months). Japan during the middle ages was our last theme that we were working on and there's still plenty of scope for doing more on this. I've plans to look at Japanese art and also try out some Haiku (have I got the spelling correct?) with the kids. We might even get to do some reading about Samurai. Then I have ambitions for the kids to go sketching in a local museum, an anthropological museum that has literally thousands of little and large artefacts from all over the world and I'm sure they have a Samurai 'outfit'. Is 'outfit' the right word? - uniform?- oh I dunno. At least if they have weapons of some sort it will please the boys. Of course these are all possible plans and in the world of home educating very little goes according to plan. FLEXIBILITY and the patience of a Saint seems to be the key to a calm home educating life.
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