Just Gonna Make That Happy Little Tree Move

A form of sequential art that I've never really explored as a teaching method is animation.  Which is surprising, as one of my college classes at the University of Michigan was about classic forms of animation.  These classic forms consisted of zoetropes (spinning cylinder), kineographs (flip books), and thaumatropes (those spinning bird in cage things).  Each of these would be a fantastic project to develop a lesson plan around.

The zoetrope uses a series a strips of sequential images that can be placed in a large spinning cylinder with a series of measured openings cut into it.  You spin the cylinder and look through the slits at a certain angle to watch the sequential strip move.  The speed of the image is controlled directly by the spinning speed of the barrel.  The most classic of these is the running horse zoetrope, created in 1834 by William George Horner when he created the very first zoetrope.

A classic zoetrope

The kineograph, or flip book as it is more commonly known, is one of the most basic forms of animation.  Sequential images presented in a book usually in wide paged format to give a good grip on the edge and flip the book to watch the images change and move.  Usually depending on how drastic the movement there is a certain speed in which you have to flip the book.  The first kineograph was created and patented in 1868 by John Barnes Linnett.

 An illustration of a kineograph

The thaumatrope is a piece of paper or canvas or other, usually small in scale, that has two separate images on each side.  There are ropes or string attached to the sides, or some other device used to twirl the paper, that is used to spin the images.  Each image is horizontally opposite the other so that when the images spin each can be seen in their current orientation.  As the thaumatrope is spun faster and faster the two images merge into a single one.  Easiest example would be a bird on one side and a cage on the other.  The thaumatrope's spinning generates a single image of a bird in a cage.

Thaumatrope of a dog chasing birds

 

Each of these classic styles of animation can be used to explore art, from craft creation to critical problem solving.  And hey, once you complete the assignment you have a fun piece of art that is interactive.