December Meeting: Stop Motion Animation with OSnap!

Everyone seemed to have enjoyed reading The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand, by Jen Swann Downey. Most of us would jump at the chance to be a Lybrarian, although there was some (valid) skepticism about the non-existent effects of changing events in the past. Savi and Mr. Kornberger were favorite characters, owing much of that favoritism to their swordplay skills...

Speaking of which, Eli and Avery remembered to bring fun sword props for our short movies, and although we ended up not being able to shoot live-action, their swords featured prominently in the two short stop action videos we made.

After splitting into two groups of three and sketching rough story boards for the scenes from the book that they wanted to portray, I gave each group a short intro to OSnap!, a free stop motion animation app available for iOS devices. OSnap! enables the user to easily take hundreds of pictures very quickly that are then seamlessly put together to create a stop motion video. There are numerous features to help keep the pictures aligned (onionskin is my favorite, which overlays the previous picture taken on to the current view so everything can be aligned) and to edit and adjust the pictures included in the video as well as the speed (frames per second). Several Bookshoppers had played around with stop motion before, and they commented that this app was so much easier than other tools they had used. Check out the finished videos below!

You Are Not Alone Savi

By Avery, Gabriel, and Stefan

 

 Lego Jousting

By Christopher, Eli, and Isaac

(The selected audio, a popular musical track, didn't export due to licensing restrictions, so please play your own soundtrack to accompany the video.)

Clearly, we had lots of swordplay fun and were able to create some pretty cool short videos to bring scenes from The Ninja Librarian to life.

For January, we are reading Secret Hero Society: Study Hall of Justice, a graphic novel by Derek Fridolfs, and we will be meeting on the SECOND Monday of the month, January 9th, to create our own graphic novels with a yet to be determined comic creation tool. Copies of the book can be picked up at the Children's Room desk. Have a wonderful holiday season!