Tangram Animation

Whilst tidying up the hard drive on my computer I came across a number of half baked animation projects from some sessions I ran at my kids' junior school. One of the projects was this simple tangram animation which was filmed on a Digital Blue camera by some 9 year olds.

As we only had a couple of cameras at the time, this project worked well in a round robin fashion with each child being able to choose the tangram character they wished to animate. I think we did create a longer film, but I don't appear to have that at home.

I've decided to give the project a makeover, this time by lighting from below to give the effect of a shadow play. I've experimented with this style before using a Digital Blue camera, but I wanted to see if there were any improvements that could be made now that I have upgraded to a Microsoft Lifecam camera and ZU3D software. Here is the result:

The technique involves mounting the camera above a lightbox. The lightbox I use is small (size A4) but perfectly adequate and ideal for use with children. For more details please see my website, here.

My animation station!

In the past I have cut out the foreground scenery from black card and stuck it directly onto the lightbox. However, the ZU3D software allows images to be imported and placed on a separate track to your stop motion frames. This has made things a whole lot easier. It also means that more elaborate scenery can be designed. I created this background image in GIMP (the white parts are actually transparent) and saved it as a PNG file sized 640 x 480 pixels to match the default dimensions for my camera in ZU3D.

Scenery - click to enlarge, save and then import directly into your project.

 and then imported it into ZU3D:

I then added another video track below the scenery and started to capture frames. The green hue was provided by green cellophane placed on the lightbox (we didn't use this in the end). I used to be able to get a similar effect using the Digiblue's software, but I can't seem to find such a feature in ZU3D. Oh well, you win some, you lose some!

I have been so pleased with the way that this has turned out and hope to come up with some more project ideas for the future.

The small tangram characters were all printed onto black card and cut out. This can be tricky to see, especially for a child; an easier method is to print onto white paper and then transfer to the card by rubbing white crayon or pencil onto the back.

Here are all of the characters used in the film - right click to save. Searching on the internet will reveal lots more that you can copy.

And here is the tangram square used to create the transformation animations:

Right click, save and print onto black card.

Microsoft LifeCam - first impressions

Sometime ago I upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. Unfortunately this meant a lot of old stuff (software and hardware) no longer worked. This included my 'trusty' digital blue camera and an ancient Logitech webcam. I have, at last, got around to buying a new webcam - the Microsoft LifeCam Studio Full HD 1080p.

I was mostly looking for a camera that I could use for stop motion animation projects with the children. In particular it needed to be easily mounted face down, preferably on a tripod. This narrowed the choice down somewhat as I could only find two easily available webcams with tripod mountings - the Microsoft Lifecam and one made by Logitech.

First impressions? Very very impressed!

Good build quality. Good USB cable length. Decent stand for placing on a desktop to film an animation. Mounts well on a tripod and on the table-top mount I used for the digital blue. Great picture quality. Decent amount of control from the supplied software (focus, brightness, zoom, white balance etc.) which means minimal movement of the actual camera during filming. I am looking forward to getting stuck into some projects with the kids, but in the meantime here is a quick lightbox animation test with the Lifecam and ZU3D software:

I need to work on the flickering (think that is the auto white balance or auto focus) but otherwise very happy.

I have also discovered an added bonus with this camera. It fits perfectly on to my Natural History Museum Microscope. If you are not familiar with this excellent (and cheap) piece of kit then I urge you to take a look at the reviews (I was the first Amazon reviewer, back in August 2008 and there are a number of my photos in the customer images). I had previously tried some video with it, by taping my old webcam to the top with ok results. But the lifecam could have been made for this microscope. It sits (and balances) perfectly on top and once positioned can be controlled entirely from the PC. On discovering this, I rushed out into the garden to grab some unsuspecting minibeast to stick under the lens - a young (and transparent) earthworm was my victim:

Not the most exciting of creatures but you get the idea of the possibilities for this combination. Btw, the circular viewing area was only about 7mm in diameter - this worm was tiny.

A couple of snapshots of the Lifecam Studio software showing the extent of the control you have:

Not the cheapest of webcams, but currently on sale at under £50 on amazon. I thoroughly recommend it.