Thursday, September 23, 2010

DoInk - A great way to teach animation for kids

This site was so much fun, I spent some time playing around and even made my own animation sample.  After much discussion about the best ways to teach kids to do animation with my Google Certified Teacher group, many different sites/softwares were mentioned.  After going through them, DoInk is the one that I liked best for using with my students, and I will definitely be using this with my students.  It's like Adobe Flash simplified, so it's user-friendly, and a great way to teach kids basic concepts of vector drawing and animation.  The best part is that it is free, so this is a great option for our school.  I also like it because you don't need to download anything to your computer, so if you have internet, you are good to go.

You can try it out even if you aren't registered, but you have to sign up with an email if you would like to post your animations, share, or download them.  You can't add audio on the site, but your files which download as .swf files come can be opened and edited in Flash.  

When animating, you can choose between frame by frame animation, or by stacking each drawing on top of each other in a composition which becomes layers in a time line.  Some basic commands allow you to animate each drawing individually.  

Happy animating!

Here is my very first animation from DoInk:

Bee Positive! by magrelacanela, made at DoInk.com





2 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for the great review & comments on DoInk. We love feedback so let us know how we can help or if we can answer any questions. Karen@doink.com

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  2. Thought if you had an iPad, you might be interested in playing with our DoInk iPad App http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doink-vector-animator/id364762290?mt=8 It was recently selected to a "List of Apps to Buy for the Holidays" http://levelupnews.com/apple/2010-holiday-app-gift-guide/ If interested, just let me know & I will send you a promo code so that you can download our iPad app for free. (It sells in the iTunes app store for $4.99) Thanks again, for your support. Karen@doink.com

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