This year at Maker Faire, we set up a large-scale stop-motion station where visitors could move objects and themselves around a 8×10 ft. stage to create short frame-by-frame animations. We made some cardboard props to spark people’s story ideas and had materials available for them to construct other necessary objects out of cardboard. One other change that we made to the setup from some of our prototype experiences at open make events this spring was putting out some large sheets of black, green, and blue fabric that could be arranged to make a background for the action.
We also set the whole animation area toward the back of the booth, behind the marble fort, and away from the traffic of the main expo hall thoroughfares, which allowed each group to take the time to understand how the process works and make a personalized movie without feeling too much pressure from other groups wanting to try the experience. Visitors to the exploratorium both (and our group during down times) made some amazing animations. While most of the movies take only a few seconds to watch, people spent at least ten times that amount of time making them and showed thoughtfulness, creativity and most importantly a sense of fun.
Here are a few of my favorite animations from the weekend…
Check out the rest of the animations made this weekend at Maker Faire at http://www.youtube.com/user/AnimationStationBigB
Aw, man, how the heck did I miss this?!!?!!?