Lesson video

Hello everybody.

Welcome to Computing.

My name is Mrs. Franzsen and it's really great to have you in this lesson today.

Are you ready to do some learning about animation? Then let's get started.

This lesson is called Using Storyboards to Plan an Animation, and by the end of the lesson, you will be able to plan an animation using a storyboard.

Let's look closely at our keywords for today's lesson.

We've got three keywords today and they are all really important because we will be using these keywords all the way through the lesson.

So make sure that you listen carefully and you understand the definition for each keyword.

Our first keyword is events.

Events.

Events are things that happen at the beginning, middle, and end of a story.

The next keyword is storyboard.

Storyboard.

A storyboard is a set of drawings used to help plan a story.

The third keyword is achievable.

Achievable.

If something is achievable, it is something that you can really do with the materials and time that you have.

So our three keywords today are events, storyboard, and achievable.

In the first part of the lesson, you will be breaking down a story into parts.

Okay, I want you to think of a story that you know well.

Maybe you've already got an idea in your head.

It could be a story that you've watched on TV or on a digital device.

It could a story that you've listened to or that was told by other people.

It could be a story that you have read in a book or played in a video game.

Or it might be a story that you have acted out in a play or when playing.

Have a think about this story and decide which one that you want to have in your head.

So here are some examples.

Let's go through them.

Jacob says, "My dad tells me this old story about three goats and a bridge." Thank you, Jacob.

Let's hear from someone else.

Sofia says, "My favourite story has clever chickens escaping from their farm." And then the last person, Alex, is sharing his story.

"There's this story where there's a snow queen who accidentally freezes everything." I think I know that story.

So you might have a story similar to this or a bit different, but you must be able to know it quite well.

There are three building blocks to a story.

The first building block is the characters, who is in the story? The second building block is the setting, where does it happen? The third building block is the events.

And events was one of our keywords as well today.

The events, what happens at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end? So you can see from the picture at the bottom that these three building blocks go together and they make up a story.

Let's do a check for understanding here.

I want you to fill in the blanks.

So when we do a fill in the blanks task, I'm going to read through everything on the page, which might sound a bit strange because there are some blanks.

And then your job is to use the box at the bottom where the words are to fill in.

One goes in each blank.

So at the bottom, our words today are events, end, setting, and characters.

Okay, here we go.

I'm going to read it through.

The three building blocks of a story are: who is in the story? Where does it happen? What happens in the story? The events are at the beginning, the middle, and the.

Okay, it's your turn now.

Off you go to fill in the blanks and I'll be here when you get back.

Welcome back.

Let's look at the fill in the blanks task together.

So the first blank is the characters, who is in the story? The next one is setting, where does it happen? And the third one is events, what happens in the story? The events are at the beginning, the middle, and the end.

Jacob's story can be organised using the building blocks.

And just to remind you, Jacob said, "My dad tells me this old story about three goats and a bridge." So we can use the building blocks.

We've got number one, characters, who is in the story? Number two, setting, where does it happen? And number three, events, what happens at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end? So if you know parts of Jacob's story, you can probably start to already guess some of the characters, the setting, and the events.

So let's look at Jacob's story a bit more closely.

The characters are the three goats and the troll.

The setting is on a bridge.

And the events have got a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The beginning is that three goats want to cross a bridge.

The middle is an angry troll tries to stop each goat, and the first two goats trick him by saying a bigger goat is coming.

The end is the biggest goat knocks him away and all three goats cross safely.

What is animation? Alex is going to give us our definition here.

"Animation is a way of making pictures or objects look as if they are moving by showing them quickly one after another." Just like this cat picture is actually a series of pictures being shown to us really quickly, and then that makes it animation because it looks like the cat is moving.

Let's see what these two characters are saying.

Sofia says, "An animation needs lots of characters and places to make it exciting." And Alex says, "Animations work best when they are simple." What do you think? Hmm.

Pause the video to have a think about that.

Welcome back.

It's important to think about how you are going to make the events in your animation happen.

You should think about each part of your story, and if each one is achievable, this means seeing if the plan can be done with the materials and time that you have.

So achievable is also one of our keywords.

It's really important because if creating your animation isn't achievable, you need to think about changing your plan so that it can be done.

Let's do a check here.

True or false: an achievable animation has lots of characters, settings, and events.

Pause the video here to think about your answer.

Welcome back.

The answer was false.

Why? An achievable animation is one that can be made with the materials and time that you have.

Well done if you got that one right.

When thinking about making your own story using animation, it's important to have a clear idea of what events are in the story.

Think about a story that you know well.

What are the events in the story and what happens at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end? So that's going to be our task for today.

The first task is going to be breaking down a story into parts.

So I want you to write a short version of a story that you already know.

Use these sentence starters to help you.

So we are splitting our story into three parts.

We've got beginning, we've got middle, and we've got the end, okay? So in the beginning, you could use the sentence starters: once there was, or one day in a.

In the middle, we could have then something happened or suddenly.

And at the end, we want things to come to a close in the story so we've got in the end, or finally.

And once you've used these starters, I want you to remember to include the details of the characters and the setting in this short version of the story that you're going to write for us.

Okay, it's time to go and work on this task now.

You can pause the video here and when you come back, we can look at an example together.

Welcome back.

I could see people working really hard on breaking down their story into parts.

Let's look at an example of that now.

Once there were three goats who wanted to cross a bridge to find some grass.

Then something happened.

An angry troll stopped them and said that he would eat them.

The first two goats tricked him.

Suddenly, the biggest goat knocked the troll into the river.

In the end, all three goats crossed the bridge and ate the grass happily.

Now, if you know the story already, you might feel like I've left some bits out or I've made it a bit more simple.

And that was the idea because when we are creating an animation from a story, we need to make sure that it is achievable.

We don't want it to have too many extra details or make it something that's going to be difficult to do with the materials that we have or the time that we have.

That's why it's important to have it be a little bit more simple from the way you would tell it normally.

Well done for all of your hard work in this part of the task.

In the next part of the lesson, we are going to plan an achievable animation.

Watch this stop-frame animation.

This animation was created using a printed paper background and printed paper characters.

Jun wants to create a stop-frame animation about Roman soldiers.

Jun says, "My story will have two Roman soldiers.

I will have a Roman amphitheatre as the background." And you can see here that Jun has got a printed background and printed characters.

Think about what movements a printed character could do in an animation.

Some of your ideas might not be achievable.

Printed characters can move in some ways, but it will be hard to make them do some movements like moving an arm.

You might want to change your idea, take it out, or do it in a simple way.

So if you had printed paper characters, it would be difficult for them to do things like move an arm because they're on printed paper so they can't really move the arm the same way we would move our arms. Let's have a look at these two animation plans.

We've got animation one and animation two.

Which animation plan is achievable? So in animation one, I'm going to read it through for us.

It says beginning: the soldiers walk in a big long line following each other.

The middle: the soldiers turn around to see who is following them.

The end: they see the baddies and throw things at them.

They chase the baddies into a castle and then up and down the stairs.

That sounds like a fun animation to watch.

Let's look at animation two.

In the beginning, two soldiers walk onto the screen from opposite sides.

In the middle, the soldiers fight in the middle of the screen.

And at the end, one soldier falls down injured and the other runs away.

So the question here is which animation plan is achievable? And if something is achievable, it means it can be done with the materials and the time that you have.

Pause the video and think about that question.

Let's look at animation one.

This plan will be difficult to animate.

Where it says a big long line, will we have enough soldiers to make a big long line? Where it says turn around, the soldiers are printed on card or paper so they can't turn around.

Where it says a castle, adding another castle means adding another background.

That is something that we could do, but might be difficult if we don't have enough time or we don't have all the materials that we need.

And there where it says going up and down the stairs, going up and down the stairs is quite complicated.

How would this work? It could take quite a lot of extra time.

So for these reasons, this plan might be quite difficult to animate.

For the second animation plan, this plan is easier to animate.

The number of characters and the settings is limited.

That means there are not very many characters and settings.

The movements are easy to animate.

Okay, so things like a soldier falling down or running away, those kind of things would be quite quick to animate.

Let's do a check here.

What does it mean to have an achievable animation? Pause the video and have a think about that.

An achievable animation means that you should plan a story that you can actually make with the materials and time you have.

What should you do if an idea isn't achievable? Pause here and think about your answer.

If something is too hard to show, like running up and down the stairs, you might need to change it take it out, or find a simple way to do it.

Well done if you got those right.

What is a storyboard? A storyboard was one of our keywords for this lesson.

A storyboard is a set of drawings used to help plan a story.

You will use a storyboard to plan a story that will use printed characters and one printed backdrop.

You can use a storyboard to show what happens in each part of the story.

The storyboard shows the beginning, the middle, and the end.

Let's do a check here.

A storyboard shows the beginning, the what, and the end of a story.

Is it A, map, B, screen, or C, middle? Pause the video to think about your answer.

Welcome back.

The answer is C, the middle.

So the storyboard shows the beginning, the middle, and the end of a story.

Well done for working on that question.

Jun is going to create his storyboard.

First, he draws the characters as simple stick figures.

Then he adds notes to give them more detail.

Then he adds notes to give more detail so we can see his notes Say soldiers walk into the middle, soldiers fight, runs away and falls down.

Arrows are useful for showing movement.

So you can see Jun has added arrows to show the soldiers walking to the middle, for the soldier running away, and for the soldier falling down.

Let's do a check here.

In a storyboard, arrows are useful for showing characters speaking.

Pause the video and think about your answer.

Welcome back.

The answer was false.

Why? The answer was false because arrows are useful for showing characters moving.

Well done if you got that one right.

Remember the three building blocks to a story.

We've got number one, the characters, who is in the story? Number two, the setting, where does it happen? And number three, the events, what happens at the beginning, the middle, and the end? I want you to think about what you will need to bring your story idea to life.

What characters will you need? What setting did you choose? And do you need any other objects or props for your animation? Okay, we're gonna get ready to do our planning now.

So the first part of this task is to create a storyboard, show the events, the beginning, the middle, and end of your story.

I want you to draw simple pictures like stick figures, add arrows and short notes to show how things will move, and to keep it clear and easy to follow.

Off you go now to work on your storyboard.

You can pause the video here and when you get back, I will show you an example.

Welcome back.

Well done for all of your effort working on those storyboards.

They're looking great.

Here is an example.

This is Jun's storyboard.

So you can see he has got three parts to his story.

In the beginning, soldiers walk into the middle.

He's added some simple drawings, some arrows, and some notes.

Then the soldiers fight, and then the runs away.

In the third panel, the ending, we've got the arrow pointing to run away, and we've got an arrow to help us understand that the other character is falling down.

For the second part of this lesson, for the second part of this task, you are going to use a storyboard to tell your story out loud.

I want you to use the beginning, the middle, and end boxes to help you.

Try to speak in full sentences and you can tell it to a partner, a small group, or your teacher.

Off you go to tell your stories to each other.

Welcome back.

I hope you enjoyed using your storyboard to tell your stories out loud.

Here is Jun's example.

"Once upon a time, there were two soldiers who met in a field.

One of them wanted to take over, but the other one said no.

They had a big fight in the middle of the field.

In the end, the first soldier fell over and the second soldier ran away." Well done for working so hard on planning your animations today.

We've come to the end of our lesson.

Let me recap the learning from the lesson Using Storyboards to Plan an Animation.

You can plan animations by thinking of a simple story with events, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

A storyboard is a simple way to plan a story using pictures.

It is important to make sure animation plans are achievable, which means choosing actions that you can do with the materials and the time that you have.

Thank you for joining me in this lesson today.

I've really enjoyed working with you, and I hope to see you again soon.