Aliens invade the Art Room!

2nd graders have completed their alien animations. Students had an opportunity to practice figure drawing and drawing in profile while using the Doink Animation App on the iPads to create a running alien in four poses. Find the lesson description here. Everyone in second grade is finished with their Aliens running loose in the art room animation. I moved their videos to iMovie, added some sound effects and music, and labeled each student's alien with his/her name.  All four movies are now uploaded to YouTube and you can find the links below. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did making them!

2A Ms. Hermsen's Class

2B Mrs. Spielmann's Class

2C Ms. Johnson's Class

2D Ms. Kemink's Class

Aliens Invade the Art Room

For the last two weeks, 2nd graders have been experimenting with animation in the art room. The first project focused on flip books creating a ball bouncing. Now, students are using the Doink Animation App on the iPads to create a running alien in four poses. The idea for this project is not originally mine, but from Tricia Fuglestad, an elementary art teacher at Dryden Elementary in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Tricia Fuglestad's blog, Dryden Elementary Art Website

 File provided by Tricia Fuglestad on her blog.

Using the Doink iPad Animation App, 2nd graders drew an original alien in four sequential poses to create the illusion that it is running. Once completed with four poses, students added the alien to a composition of a photo from the art room to give the illusion that the alien is entering from the left and exiting to the right of the photo and running rampant within our art room!

Composition directions for Alien running loose in the Art Room.

Once students are finished with their alien running in the art room, they may make a 2nd composition within DOINK choosing either to draw a 2nd alien (with four new poses) running in the art room or draw the alien's home planet and add the first alien running to the home planet in a new composition. If students finish composition two, they may make a third composition of their own free choice.

Doink Animation in the 2nd Grade

For the last two weeks, 2nd graders have been experimenting with animation in the art room. The first project focused on flip books as you can see in this previous post. Now, students are using the Doink Animation App on the iPads to create a running alien in four poses. The idea for this project is not originally mine but from Tricia Fuglestad, an elementary art teacher at Dryden Elementary in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Tricia Fuglestad's blog, Dryden Elementary Art Website

 File provided by Tricia Fuglestad on her blog.

Using the Doink iPad Animation App, 2nd graders drew an original alien in four sequential poses to create the illusion that it is running. Once completed with four poses, students added the alien to a composition of a photo from the art room to give the illusion that the alien is entering from the left and exiting to the right of the photo and running rampant within our art room!

Composition directions for Alien running loose in the Art Room.

After students have completed the composition of their alien running loose in the art room, students will then draw an alien landscape including: a foreground, middle ground, background, a yellow horizon line, trees or plants in the foreground, a blue shape in the middle ground, and a green shape in the background. Once the landscape is complete, 2nd graders will then create a composition within the animation app using the landscape, alien running (from our first animation), and a flying alien spaceship.

Fantasy Monsters (Scribble Drawings)

We are taking our scribble drawings to the next level and scribbling on larger paper (12"x18") to create an imaginary creature or monster from our scribble lines. Instead of tracing with black permanent markers like our previous creativity stretcher, we are tracing our creature/monster lines with black oil pastel. After tracing all our monster parts and adding details with the black oil pastels, students will add color to their monster and background with tempera cakes. Only a handful of students in my first grade class still have a difficult time finding images within the scribble lines. For this particular monster project, I encourage the students to use any of the lines or shapes created from the scribbles to make their Monster's head(s), body, and appendages. Once I point out numerous shapes within the scribbles that could be used, the student who was once challenged can immediately find their own shapes to create their own unique monster or creature. These drawing never fail to remind me of the imaginary creatures in Surrealist Artist Joan Miro's work. Ironically, he is our Artist of the Quarter for the 2nd nine weeks. Look for more information about Joan Miro and Joan Miro inspired projects to come soon...

1st grade monster with 4 heads.

Look at those sharp teeth!

Reminds me of a video game character.

This might be one of my favorites so far!

"People and Dog Before the Sun" by Joan Miro, 1949