Copyright

Steve

Summary

Snap is a children’s animation, creativity and sharing site.

Description

Snap allows children to create animations and share them within a community. Animations are created using an online application.

The application uses a new and innovative approach to creating animations. Objects can be dragged on, ‘snapped’ together and then animated by simply moving them around in real-time. Objects can be animated via the mouse or activated like a puppet using a wiimote or other motion sensing device.

Animations are shared through the snap showcase site; this is a bit like a children’s animation version of Youtube. The showcase site is secure and safe for children’s unsupervised use.

Both the animation creator tool and the showcase site are free to use. Snap will be available for use on a wide variety of devices including PCs, games consoles and even mobile phones allowing anywhere, anytime creative learning.

How it might be used

Mary visits the snap site; she notices the theme of the day is ‘home’. She decides to make an animation of her house and begins by clicking on the ‘create’ button. She is presented with a blank screen representing her animation, the animation timeline slider, a toolbar and a bank of objects on the left-hand side.

Mary browses to the buildings section of the object bank and drags on a house. She then browses to the background section and chooses a landscape.

Back in the object browser she chooses a sun object and adds it to the page. Mary drags the timeline slider all the way to the right-hand side and then moves the sun to the top of the page. Now when she plays the animation the sun will move from the bottom of the page to the top.

Using the light dimmer control on the toolbar Mary sets the light to be low at the start of the animation and high at the end. Now when the animation plays the sun rises and lights the scene.

Mary constructs a figure of her dad from objects in the bank and animates him popping out of the door and waving.

Mary’s completed animation of the sun rising over her house and her dad waving good morning is a big hit with her friends and family and the wider snap community. She receives a lot of positive comments and some useful suggestions for extending her animation.

Mary is very proud of her work and is excited about using the site again soon.

Contact

stevensprojects@yahoo.com