Using Animation to Develop Focus and Planning Skills
Many times teachers are faced with the challenge of maintaining their students focused on learning materials and want to encourage independent thinking and experimentation in the semi-controlled environment. Animation offers such an opportunity. In a situation where students come from different circumstances and interests, animation can provide a common basis for interaction between students, as well as opportunities to plan a series of events that they control the situation.
In my experience, if a student has the opportunity to take what they love most, and then find a way in which that particular topic or theme can work in the training program, you will have a very focused student.
One of the most pleasant experience I have had cases where a student, who added action and crime drama, and I asked him to plan the animation. It was mandated to create a 25 panel storyboard, from which he would later create the animation sequence. He was resistant to doing what the rest of the class does, but I felt that if he had a hook to bring it in training, he will have some success.
When I suggested to him that he could potentially be a really good action director and have the opportunity to tell his own story, his eyes lit up and he started deliberately. What did I do to help him break the script that he is trying to portray. Then I asked him to work on each scene, with the line of motion, beginning, middle and end. Then he began to have questions for me. He wanted to know how to create different visual effects. He wanted to know about the behavior or activities of objects. He wanted to report on the impact of the characters in the history of animation. He wanted to know how to do certain objects. Then he could from running to his desk and work quietly.