Stick Figure Animation

The blog which has received most hits has been Flipbook Animation & PowerPoint. It's wonderful how animation (fooling your eyes) is a perennial favourite with all ages. I'm hoping to help set up an after-school Animation Club soon. In the past, working at a City Learning Centre, I've been spoilt for resources (software and hardware) but now, being independent I can't afford much of what I took for granted. Schools, also, don't have access to a lot of resources, so here's how to get started cheaply.

One I made

Free software is available for download to make Stick Figure animation:-

http://pivot-stickfigure-animator.en.softonic.com/

This is easy to pick up and a good starting point. It helps to have a theme when animating. I first used this programme when doing Healthy Living. Children made a variety of exercising figures against the background of their own school.

Sorry, don't know who to credit

How about animating some of these Olympic sports symbols from the Beijing Games.

If you're lucky enough to have iPods (or even iPads) for your pupils then there are free "lite" versions of Stick Figure animation programmes in the iStore.

Hope this is helpful. I'll post what we get up to at the Animation Club (if it gets off the ground).

PS Scratch is free and it can also be used for animation. Unfortunately, it can't be exported and used in other programmes, as far as I'm aware.
PPS I have looked at but not really tried Google's GIFPAL on line resource.