Tricia Fuglestad's Blog

Shadow Dancing

1/24/2017

In this lesson, students would learn to apply a green screen technique using the Green Screen App by DoInk that creates a silhouette, copy it and change the transparency to create a shadow, then layer it over a background.

The lesson would connect dancing, music, and visual art while teaching about shadows, transparency, silhouette, complementary colors, digital layering, and movement.

Steps for creating this effect:

Step one: take green screen video of student

Step two: create the silhouette (see below)

Create the silhouette: After you load a green screen video, click on the color wheel button and choose a spot on the other side of the color wheel for the chroma key effect. The complementary color (choose red instead of green) makes the subject a silhouette. Adjust the sensitivity bar and choose the crop button to clean up your video. Export the silhouette video to the camera roll by choosing "save" while "video" is selected.

Next: Click on the image until it is full size. Download it to your camera roll.

Build your project: Bottom layer-chose image-upload the stage from camera roll Middle layer: choose video-upload the silhouette video. The green will automatically go away. Resize and position by pinching the video with two fingers. Click on video and choose "copy" from menu at bottom Top Layer: touch the layer and choose paste. Go back to the second layer, touch it to select it. Under the color wheel button, slide the sensitivity button until it becomes transparent and looks like a shadow. Audio: I would remove audio from this video and add it back later when the whole class video is made in iMovie.

Resources:

Below is a Fugleflick about visual literacy created completely in shadows by students.

Show of Hands from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Below is a performance by an Hungarian Shadow Theater Group on Britian's Got Talent show. (Get your kleenex ready.)

This Fugleflick introduces the concept of complementary colors which is part of this digital art making experience.

Complementary in Every Way from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

This Fugleflick introduces the concept of transparent and opaque which is needed to understand shadows in this digital lesson.

Opaque Man -VS- Transparent Man from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Similar Lessons:

Click to view my Dancing Silhouette lesson

Click to view my superhero silhouette still image lesson

Or look at the still image version of the dancing silhouette called iExpress.

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Two NextVista.org Finalists

1/15/2017

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A few times a year, NextVista.org hosts student video contests. These videos teach something learned in school, are 90 seconds (+ credits) long, and fit in one of three categories: student, collaboration, or teacher created. They are screened by a panel of judges and posted to the site. Those that score the highest points are posted as finalists. Winners are awarded after the finalists are viewed by teachers and students around the globe. We entered 4 movies this time into the contest and 2 of them were selected as finalists in two different categories. Click on the movie titles below to see them.

Soaring Creativity: Teacher Category

click to view both movies

Soaring Creativity: Collaboration Category

click to view all three movies

Our entries:

We entered a tutorial explaining the 2nd grade rotational symmetry lego design project in the teacher category. View it below and visit my post to learn more about this project.

Rotational Symmetry with Legos from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

We entered a shortened version (to meet requirements) of "How to be Kind" in the collaboration category. View the full version below and visit the post to find out how Dryden's youngest animators created the beating heart effect over their still images.

How to be Kind by K-3 from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

There were 2 other videos entered during this contest that were not chosen as finalists.
Deep Space (the remake) was given an Honorable Mention. View thefirst version here and learn about animated aliens to play instruments, beatbox, dance, and sing here.

Deep Space by Aliens from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

How to Stay Neat was also a remake by the 2nd graders of 2015-2016 school year. It was entered in the summer contest but since they had no other collaboration entries it was put into the current contest where it didn't score as high as the other entries. View the first version here and the remake below.

How to Stay Neat from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Scoring Guidelines:

Here are thescoring guidelines that the judges use for the videos. Try going back to each category (Teacher, Student, Collaboration) and score the movies so you can guess who might win. There are "bonus points" for turning the movie in early and following the directions when the movie is turned in, so your score may be a few points off because of this unknown factors.

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Rotational Symmetry with Legos

1/13/2017

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A few years back my students collaboratively made rotationally symmetrical lego designs. They filled our newly installed lego wall.
Last year my third graders made falling animations over a rotating optical illusion.
This year I hope to combine both ideas in a new way by having students make design again in legos then dynamically demonstrating rotation through animation.

Click image to read our article in School Arts

Our original lego wall. Click to enlarge

Using the DoInk Animation app to digitally rotate the lego designs not only extends the lesson digitally, it serves as an assessment to determine if the designs are rotationally symmetrical.

Students can add their own photo over the rotating design using a size change to indicate falling. The 2nd tutorial below shows the steps for creating this project. It would also help you just rotate the masked lego design (like above) if you skip adding the figure.

Animated Rotation of Rotationally Symmetrical Lego Design

The lego design is masked into a circle and saved as a png using the superimpose app. The student pose and design are animated using DoInk Animation app. All the steps are shown in the tutorial below or here.

Tutorials:

Rotational Symmetry with Legos from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Lego Rotation Falling Animation Tutorial from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

View my interview with Corey Engstrom of Teacher Tech Trials about this project below.

Students working:

Our Rotational Symmetry Lego Wall

-made completely by second graders using our collaborative method of taking a turn

Made physically & assessed digitally

After students made their lego plates, they used a digital image of it to do a test for rotational symmetry. They masked it into a circle using the Superimpose app then put it in the Do Ink animation app to make it rotate. See the video below to view the process and their results.

Rotationally symmetrical lego designs made physically and assessed digitally

This is the movie made from students' digital animations of their lego plates.

Rotational Symmetry with Lego from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

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Snowman Progression Animation

1/10/2017

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How to build your snowman in a progression for your stop-motion animation

Packaged Lesson Available! Click to view

Click to view the packaged lesson

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Bedroom at Arl(ington Heights)

1/4/2017

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Click to see the painting in the Google Cultural Project where you can zoom in very closely

Fourth graders are working on a piece of art inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom called Room at Arles. They are learning to draw in perspective with a vanishing point, about Van Gogh's work, and thinking about how to customize their drawing to make it more like their bedroom in Arlington Heights (or Mt. Prospect).

Resources:

Click for Bio Video

Click for BrainPop Jr

Bye Bye Road from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Drawing a Bedroom in Perspective:

Below are a series of slides from our lesson that lead the students through the steps of creating the basic parts of their bedroom inspired by the Van Gogh painting.

Click to view the gallery of sketches on Artsonia. These will be painted soon.

Finished Paintings:

View their gallery of finished paintings on Artsonia at this link.

Digital Extension:

practice round of Expressions in Expressionism

Students will use the Green Screen app by DoInk to enter the bedroom that they create. They will each get a random activity or emotion to express while in this expressionism inspired artwork relying on body language to tell the story.

"You're Kidding!"

Dancing to Music

Students used Superimpose app to enter the painting with a shadow. Click to view gallery

Entering the Artwork:

Since I happen to own a chair like the one found in Vincent Van Gogh's painting, students made their rooms without a chair so that they could sit on it when they digitally entered their artwork. Below is a quick diagram of the plan for layering a digital video over a digital image using the Green Screen app by DoInk.