Creating Stop Motion Lego Animation With Kids

Kids love cartoons and they also love LEGO. One of the best ways to encourage a child to create their own pieces of artwork is to let them animate their own cartoon.

For kids that are tactile or spatially inclined their interest in creating models with LEGO or Knex bricks easily lends itself to stop motion animation. Put simply, stop motion is the process of moving a figure in slow increments and taking a still photo after each move. Placing these photos together in a computer program and then playing them back fast makes the figure seem to move across the screen naturally.

To make the motion seem more natural the figure may move one leg then the other. Or by adding a background the figure can move and interact with items against the scenery. By introducing vehicles, other figures, lighting elements, speech bubbles, an audio track and many more variables the simplicity or complexity of the film can be regulated.

Once the images have been taken, you can import the images into a program like Windows Movie Maker (free with Microsoft Windows) and adjust the Picture rate to 0.125 second. Drag your pictures into the timeline. This will display the movie at 8 frames (individual images) per second.

A traditional film is 24 frames per second so the film will look a little stilted at this point. By going into the effects section of Windows Movie Maker and right-clicking the Speed Up Double option and selecting Add To The Storyboard, you can bring that frame rate up to 16 frames per second. This will make the frames move faster so they seem to flow into one another, just like traditional film and cartoon movies.

From her you can add audio or simply Export the film to an uploadable format. Once the film is completed your child can share their movie with friends, either on computer or via the web which may lead to group film creation, script writing, model building and more.

Confused? Don't be. It's actually easier than it all sounds and your child will most likely pick up the process more quickly than you! Stop motion movies with LEGO is a great way to enhance and expand on a child's love of building and creating.

By: Inger Fountain

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Inger loves stories and loves to write. She has been writing words on paper for quite some time so when the Internet came along she started writing online too. You can see her latest website which helps people to choose the best blu ray laptop at www.bluraylaptop.org/.