Pipe Cleaner Animation

Room 8 explain how they made their pipe cleaner animation.

On Tuesday we made some amazing animations with pipe cleaners. First we needed to craft our fantastic creatures. We twisted and turned the pipe cleaners to make their bodies. We then got into groups and planned what our creations would do. We set them up in the starting pose and then using a camera on a tripod we took five pictures. These pictures gave us a rest before the action started. After that we moved the creatures a little amount and then took another picture. We repeated this procedure 80 to 100 times.

 

Next we had to take the pictures from the camera onto the computer. We used a movie making piece of software to run one after another. We wanted the pictures to run at 10 frames per second. This made the creatures look like they were moving.

We hope you enjoy it.

Animation

This term we are learning about animation, what it is and how it is made. We have found out that animations are made up of lots of pictures, each with a small difference to the one before. When these are played quickly our brains are tricked into thinking the pictures are moving. 


To explore this idea we made some little flip books. A flip book is made up of lots of little pictures which the watcher flips through to watch the animation. Flip books have been around since 1868 when John Barnes Linnett created his kineograph (kine meaning movement and graph meaning picture). Our little flip books have two pictures and you roll the top picture back and forth across the bottom picture to see the movement. It was important to make sure the changes we made to our pictures were only small so that our brain would be tricked.


Mrs Davies has made a little video of some of our flip books so you can see how they turned out.

Technology Challenge

On Monday we took part in a technology challenge to make a paper plane that could turn as it flew. We got into groups of four and were given four pieces of A4 paper, two drinking straws, 1m of sticky tape and a blob of blu-tak. Each team had 15 minutes to come up with a design that included at least one of the straws and to build it. We then took it in turns to try our planes out. It was lots of fun and we are going to be writing about the experience so keep an eye out for some writing in the near future. For the moment here are some of the pictures from the afternoon.

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Clay Making at The Waikato Society of Potters in Hamilton

Marcus, Jennifer, Charne & Anna tell all about our recent trip to have a go at some pottery.

On Thursday the 10^th of November we went to the Waikato Society of Potters workshop and we made superheroes out of clay.

The potter gave us each a bit of clay and we then watched her make a clay figure. After that we had a go. Firstly we banged and bashed the clay and rolled it into a sausage, we then cut it in half and moulded the head. After that we cut a line in the middle for legs and smoothed them.  We cut out arms with the other bit of clay, smoothed them and then we scratched them with a fork at the end of the arm. We did the same with the places on the body the arms would go. We then used a toothbrush to wet the parts we scratched and stuck them together. We made a hole in the back to hang them up and we used newspaper to keep the hole from closing (the paper burns away in the kiln). We then did the smaller features like the face and clothes. They turned out awesome.

We also had a turn on the wheel; I think we all enjoyed it heaps! We made bowls, pots and gigantic messes. We had to keep our hands wet so that the clay didn’t stick to our hands. We used our fingers to change the shape of our creations and we also changed the speed to control the clay and so that it would not go all over the place. If you did want to speed up the process you could but be careful! We had a great time and we all wish we could go back again. We have our fingers crossed that they all survived being fired in the kiln.

Balloon Car Racing

As an end of term treat Room 8 undertook a balloon car building challenge. Each team was given one balloon to power their car and had to include half a one litre milk bottle in their design. We got an hour and a half to build our cars with each team having two or three members.

(John, Steven and Marc construct their long distance racer)

There was lots of variation in the designs for each team with cars that looked like a dragster through to three wheeled racers. The classroom buzzed with activity and excitement as the cars took shape and there were squeals of delight and despair as test runs proved designs successful or still works in progress.

(Zachary, Bhavit and Marcus admire their first effort)

(Cherie checks out the construction of her teams racer)

At the end of the hour and a half the teams gave themselves a name and then we headed to the hall for the final race off.


There were three awards up for grabs, longest distance, fastest racer and most interesting design. John, Steven and Marc took the prize for the longest distance; Amy, Anna and Gabi built the fastest car and Cheri, Amy and Maega claimed the most interesting design award.

(Haydon gives his teams racer a test run)

We took some video of our cars in action and we will try and post a little movie of our efforts at a later date.

Technology Challenge

On Wednesday Room 8 tried out the despicable TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGE. Every group had its own crazy idea of how to get the medicine down to safety, and to the person at the bottom of the steep cliff. The medicine (an egg) was very fragile and could not be dropped or it would break.  

Each team was only allowed a certain amount of materials:

1 meter of string

1 roll of tape

3 sheets of white A4 paper

1 piece of A5 cardboard paper

1 plastic bag

The first time nobody could stand the agony seeing their egg shattered to pieces. The ‘Mac Eggs’ egg almost survived. But in the second round, the ‘Smart Guys’ and the ‘Hot Shots’ egg, made it without a scratch. The sad thing was we were only marked on the first try, not the second L But the good thing was we had a really fun time both making the ‘carrier’ for the egg and dropping the egg.

(written by Gabi and Steven)