Low Tech Really Cool Animation

I was thinking about one of our very first attempts at rotoscoping at Dryden the other day. It was a wonderful way to create an animation collaboration in a low tech way.
We created a 3 second video that would easily loop. So we brainstormed some options and came up with dance moves that can be repeated over and over again.
Here are the steps for how we made this little silhouette gif of a student spinning. It's low tech in that you only need one computer, printer, and scanner. The students do the work on transparencies.

1. Make a three second video  (something easy to loop)
2. Split the video into an image sequence. You can download MPEG Streamclip to export your video to image sequence. 
   
3. Use this automator workflow (on a mac) to turn your image sequence into a pdf that you can send to a b/w printer (should be around 35 pages)
4. Number the pages in order (you will thank me later)
5. Pass out transparencies, black permanent markers, and a numbered page from the printed pdf to your students
6. Have students make a silhouette on the transparency over the print out from the video. Be honest about the image even if it is abstract looking or blurry.
7. Collect, order, & scan the images (use white paper behind transparencies). Number them in the computer.
8. Use ezgif to select all the images and make them into a gif.
9. Celebrate your super cool collaboration!

screenshot of all the images in sequence ready to be made into a gif

Want a high tech option?

We now have a class set of iPads available so I designed a lesson to try an iPad Rotoscope Animation collaboration. It's the same idea but no need for transparencies, scanning, or printing. Everything is organized and created digitally. Explore it here.