Tag: drawing

How to create animated video frames from your doodles

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Have you ever thought of breathing life into your doodles? And using them as a video frame? Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to create something similar to the one in the video below.

1 Doodle something. Anybody can draw so go ahead and draw something. Think of the video you’re going to create so that your moving frame is in harmony with the content (unlike in the video above 😊). Also think about how much space it will take up from the frame and how you want to position the moving element(s). Don’t forget that you will place this gif as a top layer on your video, so it needs to be transparent. There are several ways to remove the background, for example Canva offers this option.

2 Animate your doodle. This is the tricky part. The one in the video above is a stop motion gif, which means I created several frames (36 to be precise) and put them together in ezgif. Here’s a more detailed guide on how to do this. There are several other easy (and less time-consuming) options to animate your doodles, using various platforms. Read about them here.

3 Record yourself. The next step is creating the video of yourself. Use your phone, your laptop camera, Flip, Screencastify or your go-to video recording tool.

4 Put it together. Now you have everything you need: a gif of your doodle and the video recording of yourself. You just need to put these together. Again, choose your go-to tool, there are so many to choose from. An easy choice for teachers is Canva. Once you uploaded everything, you can add other assets – if you’re using Canva, you can choose from their archive. When everything is done, just download your creation and spread the word.

If you create a video with your own animated doodles, send me a message or tag me on social media – I’d love to see it.

Animate your own doodles (vol.2)

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Do you like doodling? Do you draw funny characters? Do you want to see them move? There are some easy and some time-consuming ways to make them come alive. I earlier wrote about it, mostly with the focus on how to use them in teaching; this time I’ve collected some more ways to animate your doodles without having to learn to use any programmes.

1 Stop motion is an easy but not necessarily fast way to make your drawings move. You need to create several frames that you will put together in a gif to create the illusion of movement. Below’s a demo of the process and following this link you will find a more detailed guide on how to create a gif by stringing still images. You can put together the still images in ezgif to create the gif you need.

2 Do Ink is an intuitive tool to animate your drawings (and you can create green screen videos as well). Unfortunately it works in the Apple ecosystem only, but if you have access, you can create awesome animations and videos. Follow Tricia Fuglestad (@TriciaFuglestad) and Erika Sandström (@greenscreengal) on Twitter for a lot of fun ideas on how to use this tool.

3 Meta Demo Lab allows you to upload your doodles and animate them. It can animate one character at a time, by scanning, adding joints (only for the sake of animation), then by allowing you to pick a movement out of a selection of pre-prepared options. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow downloading the animated character, but you can take a screencast.

4 With Scroobly you can animate your drawing using your own movement. Sounds fun? Give it a go! Doodle on the screen and use your own body to move around and animate it. You can make a 15-second recording. You can export the gif, you can export the sequence of images (in PNG format) or you can export the doodle – which is great as you can work with it later on and it’s super easy to use it in another tool (for example in a video).

Do you know of other great and easy ways to animate your drawings? Let us know in the comments section.

Interview activities using AI

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These activities don’t replace teaching students interview techniques or basic communication skills. However, they add a fun element so that students become more engaged and hopefully learn more. Apart from content and communication, they will learn empathy and digital citizenship skills as well.

  1. Interview a long dead historical figure. Students write the script, and animate the historical figure with AI (for example Tokkingheads). They record their bits as the interviewer. They edit the interview for example in Flipgrid so that they can easily show their work to the world.
  2. Animate your drawing/photo and make it speak. Students can use their own drawings or photos and make them talk in a fun way with Blabberize. As a teacher use this opportunity to practice job interviews, descriptions, creating a hook, starting a youtube video and so much more. If you click on the Blabberize link, you can watch a llama talk. Animating the animal is quick – so the students can concentrate on content.
  3. Animate a famous painting to practice perspectives and empathy. With either Tokkingheads or Blabberize, you can animate a painting as well. Students can make the painting talk and tell everyone about how they felt when they were being painted, the circumstances in which the painting was made, or how boring Mona Lisa finds the tourists around her. This technique will help students take a different perspective and empathize with others. As a bonus, take a painting with multiple figures, and groups of students animate different figures from the painting to have a debate.

You can use these activities in various subjects: students can interview Pythagoras about his theorem or draw a cell and make it speak. Students can have two famous historical figures talk to each other or improve their speaking skills in the foreign language classroom. Don’t forget though to teach respectful and responsible behaviour. AI can be used in a demeaning way and we don’t want to bring up bullies in our classroom. This is, therefore, the perfect opportunity to teach elements of digital citizenship.

🔧 Resources. Browse this collection for more AI resources, or this blog post for more ideas.

What ideas do you have? Have you tried any of these activities in this format? Share with us in the comments section.

Do more with – new series on Youtube

primary, secondary, tips & ideasLeave a Comment on Do more with – new series on Youtube

The Training Department has started a new series on its Youtube channel. The aim of this series is to present ideas that revolve around a key concept in teaching such as feedback, motivational strategies, or the power of discussions in teaching. Episodes on various lenses in teaching might also crop up, such as time, space or change. The first episode in the series is about storytelling.

What other ideas do you have? Share with us in the comments section. If you wish to watch a video on a topic that hasn’t been dealt with, contact the TD.

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