Animation for Learning

Below is the animated GIF created in Photoshop CS4. I first experimented with the software Stykz out of curiosity and to have some hands on with a different type of animation software. I enjoyed learning another way of animating, however I felt this was not challenging enough for me. As a Desktop Publishing teacher part of my curriculum is teaching animation. The curriculum does not allow time to spend on animation so the lesson is using a stick man to create movement. The students really enjoy doing this lesson. I wanted to challenge myself to work with more sophisticated graphics so I chose to use Photoshop.

I began with the image of the the turtle on the raft that I had gotten from Microsoft Office Clip Art. I also found the background trees using two different pieces of clip art from Microsoft Office. I used Photoshop to combine the three images creating the land, sky and water. I separated the turtle into pieces placing those pieces in individual layers in order to be able to have the turtle drop his paddle and fall off the raft. In all, there are a total of 29 frames that make up this animation. It took about four hours to complete, which included the artwork as well as building each frame.