Pivot, Droidz and Shapeshifter

Pivot and Droidz

My fascination with animation and providing opportunities for students to express themselves in this genre continues. I have mentioned in previous posts about the stick figure animation program, Pivot. This free download is a great introduction to animation techniques for all ages. In previous posts I have explained how a Pivot animation can be turned into a movie file (see my 50th post for an example of this).

The latest news is about a website called droidz.org. This site has thousands of pivot figures and items that can be inserted into a pivot animation. Note: some of the figures and shared animations are extremely violent, so this site really is for more senior students (even though I found out about it from my grade 4 students!)

Shapeshifter

I have previously mentioned the fantastic site, Aniboom. As well as the amazing creations that are posted on this site, there is a section for creating animations as well. This is an online program called, Shapeshifter. Using only four geometric shapes, using this program can create some amazing animations. This would be a great stepping stone from Pivot to Flash animation. I would thoroughly recommend this one for students moving on from Pivot.