The Arizona STEM Acceleration Project
Create and Animate a Character
Animate a Character
A 3rd, 4th, 5th grade STEM lesson
Alexis Ramos Kratzer
3/13/24
Notes for teachers
List of Materials
Grade 3, 4, 5, 6 NCAS & ISTE STEM Standards
NCAS Standards:
CREATING
Apply visual organizational strategies to design and produce a work of art, design, or media that clearly communicates information or ideas.
Demonstrate persistence in developing skills with various materials, methods, and approaches in creating works of art or design.
Reflect on whether personal artwork conveys the intended meaning and revise accordingly.
ISTE Standards:
1.1 Empowered Learner - Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences. 1.1d Technology Operations - Students understand the fundamental concepts of technology operations; demonstrate the ability to choose, use and troubleshoot current technologies; and are able to transfer their knowledge to explore emerging technologies.
1.6 Creative Communicator - 1.6a Choose Platforms of Tools Students choose the appropriate platforms and tools for meeting the desired objectives of their creation or communication.
1.6d Customize the message -Students communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively by creating or using a variety of digital objects such as visualizations, models, or simulations.
Objective(s):
Today we will create a character by drawing a character in 3-5 different poses. It can be a stick figure, an anime style character, or the student can choose from a pre-created template of characters.
Today we will import our characters into Scratch using the camera feature on the chromebook. The teacher will then show the students how to edit the characters and convert them to vectors.
Today we will use our coding knowledge to animate the characters.
Today we will view other enriching projects to decide what the next animation project will be.
Agenda (lesson time)
This project may take up to 4 lesson periods of up to one hour each.
1st- Have students draw or color a character in 3-4 different poses. .
2nd- Have students take photos of their characters using the camera app on their chromebooks, have students upload the characters into Scratch and edit the characters, resizing them, converting them to vectors, and possibly painting the characters.
3rd- Have students animate the characters using the “switch costume tooi” in Scratch and providing the characters with coordinates to move to.
4th- Add sound and conversations/thought bubbles.
Scratch Schedule
Day 1 – Teach students to import sprites (pre-loaded in Scratch) and model for students how to choose a stage ( background) – they must have start screen & story screen so they must find two:
Day 2 – Teach students to import sprites (characters) and backgrounds from the internet. Students must make sure the sprite is a PNG file, meaning it has no white background. For example:pikachu.png. If it has a background the must edit the background. They will also take a photo of the character that they created and upload it into Scratch
Day 3/4 – Teach students the basics of the motion and control coding pieces. Explain to students the orange dot is the “control” this controls what happens and when. The blue dot is the motion and this allows the characters to move around the screen. This concept may take two days for the students to understand, they also must understand that they need to enter the coordinates, this tells the sprite (character) where to go. I usually suggest for Day 3, all the students import the X,Y grid as the background, this helps them with coding and gives them a visual of where the characters should go and how they move.
Day 4/5 – Teach students about costumes and how to import a GIF into Scratch. This is the day where I explain that the purple “looks” dot allows the programmer to change the way the character “looks” at certain times. I usually code the scratch cat to change between it’s two costumes. This makes the cat look as if it is walking. The students can also import a gif and make the gif appear as if it is moving. The trick is the student must first import the gif as a sprite, then go to the costumes tab and import the gif a second time as a series of costumes.
Day 6 – This part of the Scratch lesson should take you into another week, I call the final week “putting the finishing touches” on our Scratch stories,, this allows students who were absent to catch up and it also allows more time for students to code their gifs and gives the teacher a chance to review everything the student learned last week. The focus of day 6 is that the students add all the switch costume blocks, add the timers, and make sure the motion blocks flow smoothly as the character switches costume.
Day 7– Students will add sounds to their characters and backgrounds. There are two ways the students can add sound to their games, the first is they can use the sounds already pre-loaded into Scratch and the second is they can record a song/sound from the internet using the record feature inside of Scratch. The students can come before school or during lunch to record their sounds if they are having trouble recording with the noise in the class. It usually is not an issue.
Day 9 – Students will code their backgrounds to mesh together. There must be timers attached to all the backrounds, each background should have its own music, and the characters must be coded to show up at exactly the right time. This takes A LOT of trial and error, the students must time everything on their own. This is frustrating for them and the teacher should be patient and helpful during this time. Once the story all meshes together, it is pretty awesome.
Day 10 – On day 10 the students will turn in their stories, they can use the turn in feature on CS First, email the game to the teacher, or turn the game in as a google classroom project. Teacher should also provide instructions and model for the students how they want to story to be turned in.
Enrichment Activities - Here are a few enriching activities students can complete if they finish ahead or if the teacher has an after school club/older students to also teach. The stop/motion program is for K-2nd grade as they are too young to follow this lesson plan, but can still design a small animation project if the teacher is doing a school-wide animation unit.
UNITY -A MORE ADVANCED ANIMATION PROGRAM
Free Tutorial Avaialable on Code Monkey
https://unitycodemonkey.teachable.com/p/learn-unity-from-beginner-to-advanced-from-a-professional-indie-game-developer?coupon_code=THANK_YOU&product_id=4697992
STOP MOTION ANIMATION APP FOR IPAD
BLENDER - VERY ADVANCED ANIMATION PROGRAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EwWUYDtxeQ - BLENDER TUTORIAL
Assessment
Consider assessing the following:
Attractiveness 4 points
Creativity 4 points
Sprites/ Characters 4 points
Sound 4 points
Code Block 4 points
Extra Credit up to 4 points
Differentiation
Students may need help animating their characters and understanding the concepts of the motion block in Scratch in regards to the coordinates. They can also begin a more simple animation project on the code.org website if the Scratch portion proves to be too difficult.
Remediation
Extension/Enrichment
Students can explore more advanced programs for animation such as unity or even blender. Students will be shown blender as a tool that they can use in the future, but they will be advised this is a professional tool. If the students prefer to pursue a project in unity they will be given the chance to do so, the students who choose to continue with code.org projects will also have a chance to code in a more structured and much easier platform. This choice depends on the skill level and gifted nature of each student.