LERN Article

	Virtual Tour

Animation

Take a tour of some short animations on the Internet. Our Virtual Tour is of animations created with GIF files. You will not need any special software to view these animations. More sophisticated animations can be done with Flash, which does require the user to download the Flash plug-in.

1. Our first stop is a delightful web site for youngsters with a variety of great short animations that are tutorials. Click on one of the tutorials and see a 2-3 minute "movie." Have fun going to http://www.brainpop.com

2. Next, see an early 1900s dancer. A great animation, a dancer, from an early motion picture, of Eadweard Muybridge, a web site designed by Michael Linder here.

Notice that the animation is "primitive," just as the movies were in the beginning. Animations range from 10 frames per second to 32 frames per second. Television is at 24 frames per second, while movies are at 32 frames per second. The early dancer is obviously at fewer than 24 frames per second.

3. Now let's look at another kind of instructional animation. This one helps you learn how to tie knots. It is from the 42nd Brighton Scout Group in East Sussex, United Kingdom, great animations on how to tie different kinds of knots, at http://www.mistral.co.uk/42brghtn/knots/42ktmenu.html

4. The dancer and knot animations are cited on an excellent web site with animations from Ed Stephan of Western Washington University. We learned of Stephen's site from Ko and Rossen's book on teaching online. You can check out other animations on Stephen's site at http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Animation/animation.html

The knot tying animation illustrates how animations are done. Animations are essentially lots of still drawings (photos, pictures), which rotate or switch in very fast motion.

Thanks for taking this Virtual Tour of Animations!