Tricia Fuglestad's Blog

Book Cover Photo Shoot

6/19/2018

I love to come up with digital projects that give students a chance to mix medias to make video, animations, or digital art. This project will ask students to layer green screen video over an empty book cover to become the character through body language and digital drawing. It's kinda like we caught them during their book cover photo shoot.

1. I started by cleaning up a few Dr. Seuss book covers so that this lesson can be used to help celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday in March as well as Read Across America. I have a class set of Dr. Seuss books in my art room, so I love to use them whenever possible. I titled each book, added a drop shadow for depth, and layered it over a widescreen format background so that it will fit into the Do Ink Green Screen app without needing resizing.

2. After the student reads the book, then they will be asked to use their body language to impersonate the main character from the story before green screen. They would need to freeze on the last frame in the pose they would want on their cover.

3. Layer the green screen video over the book template in the Green Screen App by Do Ink. Make sure to crop, adjust, and line up the edges to create a clean effect

4. Save the last frame of the movie as a still picture from the Green Screen App to the camera roll. This will be used for the digital drawing so make sure it isn't blurry.

5. Use a drawing app like Brushes Redux to draw over the photo to add Seuss-ish details to enhance the character to fit theme of the book. Keep the same image size so you can put this back into the green screen movie project

6. Line up all the clips/images together in the Do Ink Green Screen app: video, still of last frame, digital drawing over frame

Examples

Or what about this idea: Use a still picture, size and place over book cover in Superimpose app (because you can add a nice drop shadow) then animate a growing heart (because the Grinch heart grew in the story). This could be done in the style above too, but there wouldn't be drop shadow.

Animated Book Cover

This idea uses Do Ink Drawing and Animation app to redraw the character(s) of a Dr. Seuss book and animate it and the text of the book. This requires masking the book cover to erase the character and pull of the text to use it as an image to animate. It is similar to this Jumping of the Pages lesson idea here.

4 Comments

Carrie Jostmeyer

1/9/2019 08:45:06 am

I was curious what you used to create the book cover without the characters?? Did you use the Superimpose app for that too??

Tricia M Fuglestad

1/12/2019 03:27:17 pm

Hi Carrie,

I use the Brushes app, select the color of the book background and paint out the image on the cover. I chose Dr. Seuss books because it is a simple design to mask out with digital paint.

Jessica

4/23/2019 11:18:17 am

Thank you for sharing! How did you get her feet to look like they are behind the grass in the Lorax cover, did you color over it using the brushes app as well?

Tricia Fuglestad

4/24/2019 05:11:03 pm

Jessica,
I used the mask tool in Do ink green screen app and erased the bottom of her video (shins to feet) then lined up the video at the edge of the grass.

About Me

Tricia Fuglestad, NBCT,
is the K-5 art teacher at Dryden Elementary School in Arlington Heights, IL. with a masters in K-12 technology integration. Tricia has been recognized for her innovative teaching in 2010 with the PBS Teachers Innovation Award, won Illinois Art Teacher of the Year in 2011, awarded Teacher of Distinction in 2012 by the Golden Apple Foundation, received Western Region Elementary Art Teacher of the Year 2013, selected to become a Jacobs Educator 2014-15, was presented with the NAEA Art Technology Outstanding Community Service Award in 2016, honored with the ISTE Teacher Educator Network Tech in Action award, 2018, and won an Art Education Leadership Award via Artsonia in 2019. Learn more here.