10 Animation Apps

I have blogged previously about the power of apps that tell stories as an educational activity. It stimulates higher order thinking skills, it provides opportunities for reflection and it enriches the learning experience for our students. So here I have listed apps that allow your students to create animations. I love the simplicity with which animations allow difficult concepts to be easily explained. These apps provide you with another set of tools to enhance your students learning.

Animation Studio $0.99AU
Why take the time to create your Animation if you can't add a Soundtrack or Export as a .mov File? Animation Studio allows you to create and share your animations!. Anyone can animate. You can easily create your own animated movies, add characters and a soundtrack w/ voice, music + text to speech, then share with anyone, anywhere in HD via .mov file export, email, YouTube, or broadcast on Apple TV via AirPlay™!



Animation Desk for iPad $4.99AU
Animation Desk for iPad is a mobile app that allows users to create hand-drawn animations on iPad. The drawing interface provided by the app resembles the real working environment of a professional animator who completes each frame of an animation on a specially-designed desk, the animation desk. Despite its professional design, Animation Desk for iPad is easy and intuitive to work with.



Toonastic $1.99 AU
Making cartoons is as easy as putting on a puppet show - simply press the button, move characters, and tell your stories through play. Once you are done, Toontastic will playback your animation and voice asa cartoon for you to share with firends and classmates. Toontastic teaches key storytelling principles that help to promote Creativity at a young age. Its drawing tools bring kids’ wildest ideas to life alongside virtual sets chock full of characters and settings to spark the imagination.



Kids Animation FREE
This free version of the successful 'Animation Studio' App provides all the tools you need to create great Animations on your iPad! Paint, draw, add Fun Stamps and even your own Soundtrack! For Help, Tap the "?" Button and check out our full In-App Tutorial! Easy! The 'Kid' Series Apps are built for Kids of all Ages to be Wholesome Entertainment and Family Safe. Advertisers have even been asked to be considerate of Ad Content!



Animation Creator HD $1.99
Animation Creator HD allows your creativity to come to life on your iPad and iPad 2! You are the director! With simple, yet powerful drawing tools, color palettes, color sliders, and easy to use frame management, you're only limited by your imagination! Animate till your heart's content. Your animations will look smooth and life-like with the high frame rate playback of Animation Creator HD! This is an really cool app.



PuppetPals: FREE + $2.99
Create your own animated stories. Simply pick out the characters, drag them onstage and tap record. Movements and audio are recorded for your performance. You get to be a silly as you like making funny voices to match your characters. If you get the Directors Pass for the extra charge you can act out a story of Pirates on the high seas, fight scary monsters or play the part of a wild west bandit. It is more expensive but gives you heaps more options for the budding animator.



Flip Boom Lite: FREE
Draw and animate cartoons on your iPad with FlipBoom Lite from Toon Boom Animation! A light version of ToonBoom's award-winning software Flip Boom Classic, this fun and intuitive drawing application makes it easy to doodle and create simple smooth-looking cartoon animations. FlipBoom Lite is ideal for learning how to sketch and animate your drawings to create cartoons.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/flipboom-lite-free/id385135145?mt=8


Flickmation Lite or Flickmation $4.49
Create hand (finger?) drawn animations on your iPad and bring life to those stickmen. Flickmation lets you create animations (flickbooks or flipbooks) on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You draw each frame and then play through the frames bringing your creation to life. When connected to a WiFi network you can copy your animations and stamps to and from your computer. FlickmationHelper, a Java application for your computer, makes this simple and easy to do.



iAnimator $0.99
iAnimator allows you to create animations based on photos you have taken on the camera or photos you have loaded onto your ipad from itunes. Select up to twenty images to create an animation. Take multiple photos in sequence then load them into the app in the order you require. Them adjust the speed and frequency of the animation with the slider bar and the loop counter. Once you have setup your animation you can select play to view your animation.



Doink Animation $5.49 AU
This has been one of the most fun apps I have played with for some time. This was another app I could not get near because my 12 year old commandeered it for the whole day after I downloaded it. She had her first animation up and running in under 5 minutes. I was impressed! She was impressed! This is always a good sign from a tech savvy kid who is aware of what will and won't work with her peers at school. I liked the way the app can be operated with simple gestures.

DoInk Animation is also a member of Moms with Apps, a collaborative group of family-friendly developers seeking to promote quality apps for kids and families.

As an art teacher this is the type of app that really excites me, not only for what we could do with it in art but because we could showcase the possibility of an app like this to other subject areas as well. Being so easy to use was one of the things that immediately struck me with DoInk. I love the concept. The ghosted image of the previous drawing means that sophisticated gestures and movements can be obtained even by the youngest of kids. The older students would really take this to the next level. Using a stylus does give you a better experience but it is not really needed.

Storytelling as an educational activity is experiencing strong support at the moment from educationalists. The higher order thinking skills needed to analyse a situation and then illustrate it to a perceived audience is one which many teachers and parents are looking to emulate. The storytelling aspect of a tools like this is excellent.

As an educator I am all about making information entertaining as well as educational. So many times in my classroom my students have achieved the most stunning outcomes when they have not realised they were involved in the activity of learning. DoInk looks like an excellent app for replicating this learning. Check out the youtube clip from the guys over at iPadCreative. I have directed you to these guys before because they have some really cool stuff on their website. They are also generous with their time on evaluating apps for education. Enjoy!




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