Katelin O’Hare (@oharebros) teaches 6th art and was interested in doing an end of year tech project. Katelin led a stop-motion unit with 8th grade in the fall, and she considered trying it out with 6th grade as well. I suggested using Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches as inspiration, since 6th grade was finishing up their unit on The Renaissance: Romeo and Juliet in English, debates about Galileo and Copernicus in Social Studies, Golden Ratios in Math, etc…
We had the students locate hi-res images of da Vinci’s work on Artstor.org, as Columbia University offers a subscription to their community members, and we are allowed to download files for educational purposes. We had a spirited discussion about copyright, terms of service, and fair use.
Students created a storyboard using post-its on a large sheet of paper in order to detail the key frames of their short film. They were tasked with shooting a minimum of 10 seconds at 10 frames per second (100 frames). They used brads, string, sticks, and wire to make the tiny movements of their paper cut-outs. Some of their finished shorts are below. Enjoy!
