Stop Motion Animation #Stikbots

**** Please note that we do not receive commissions of any description for this review. 
It is simply a product that we have found useful. ****

I have always loved watching stop motion animations, some of my all time favourite stop motion movies and shows are the Wallace and Grommet series, the Shaun the Sheep series, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Boxtrolls, The Pirates and Chicken Run. My brother really likes watching Pingu too. But while watching them, I have always been very curious about how they make them.

I really like watching the extras on DVD's because I can learn new and interesting facts about the movie that I just watched and on some of the stop motion movies, they have how the animations were made. Just from watching these, it looks really difficult and very time consuming.

Here's some information about Stop Motion Animation, just in case you're not sure what it means.

Stop Motion Animation is a technique that film makers can use to bring static objects to life - the film makers can basically make a character look like it is alive, even though it might be made of plastic or plasticine. Film makers do this by taking a series of still photos of the characters in the film. In each photo frame, the character has to move a tiny little bit so that when the photos are played in sequence from start to finish, it looks like the character is moving. My brother said that the sequence of photos are a bit like a flip book. Just in stop motion animation, the sequence of photos are played at a super fast speed.

When film makers are making a stop motion animation, they will usually use clay figures, puppets,plasticine, miniature figures with movable joints and sometimes even paper or fabric. The reason that these are commonly used is because all of these art mediums can be easily handled and re-positioned in small increments.

When I did some research on Stop Motion Animation, I found out that Stop Motion Animation was developed in the late 1800's. That's a very long time ago. The very first movie that used Stop Motion techniques was a movie called The Humpty Dumpty Circus. It was made in 1897 by J Stuart Blackton and Albert E Smith and was about a toy circus of acrobats and animals that comes to life. The two film makers used their daughters toys and dolls as the props. I also found out that this movie has been lost - there's only one screen shot that can be found - and that the reason the movie is lost is because the movie is really, really old and film makers back then probably didn't know how to save their creations. It's not like they had a phone or computer or USB to save it on.

A few weeks ago, my Mummy surprised my little brother and me with two Stikbot people figures and a Stikbot Dinosaur. My best friend, G, had come over for a play, and we were all a bit bored because it was too wet to go outside to play.

Stikbots are really cool because they are pose-able robot looking figures that have suction cups on their hands and feet. I think the dinosaur Stikbot is meant to be a T-Rex because it has two little arms and two big feet like a T-Rex. It has suction cups on it's big feet.

The suction cups mean that the Stikbots can literally stick to any surface, it's really cool. And because the Stikbots head, arms and legs are all joined to their body with tight stretchy elastic, it means you can change how the Stikbots stand and move around.

The other really cool thing about Stikbots is that they can be used to make Stop Motion Animation and there is an app that can be downloaded onto phones or tablets.

Mummy showed G, L and me how to move the Stikbots really slowly and then showed us how to use the app.

The app is called Stikbot Studio and Mummy downloaded it from the Google Play Store. It's a free app, so that is good too. Daddy had a look on his phone because it is an Apple phone and you can get the app in the Apple store too and it is free as well. Once Mummy had shown us how to use the app, G, L and me made some stop motion animations. The one just under this is the first one we made. We set up an animation studio in our garage and wouldn't let Mummy and Daddy in until we had finished!

Did you like that one? It was lots of fun to make.

I'm going to try to explain how to use the app.

1. When you open the app on your phone, Mummy has the app on her phone and her tablet but the lighting is better on her phone, the screen you should first see looks like this. Can you see the four icons along the bottom? There is Create Movie, Capture Photo, Gallery and Help. When we first opened the app, we had a little play to see what was on it.

2. The Help icon is really cool and useful because there are lots of video tutorials on how to use the Stikbots and how to make animations. We watched the first three tutorials before we made our first Stop Motion Animation.

One of the tutorials explains that to make a Stop Motion Animation that is one second long, you need to take at least 10 different photo frames. Can you imagine how many photo frames they need to take to make a movie that is an hour long? Now I know why Stop Motion Movies look so time consuming and complicated to make.

3. When you go into either the Create Movie or Capture Photo icons they both look basically the same. The only difference is that in the Capture Photo icon you can only take one photo at a time. 

In the Create Movie icon, that's where you capture lots of photos in a sequence. Each time you press the red camera button, the app captures a photo frame. What's really cool is that once the photo is captured, a faint photo that you just took stays on the screen so that you know where you moved the Stikbot to.

Once you start capturing frames for your Stop Motion Movie an arrow comes up in the top right hand corner of the screen. Once you have finished your movie, you press the arrow in the top right hand corner and it saves the movie.

4. When you go into the next screen, this is where you can edit your movie creation. You can add a soundtrack to your movie or you can add your own sounds. You can also play your movie to see what it looks like.

If you go into the icon on the top right that looks like a flower, you can change how many frames per second - fps - that your movie will play at. So you can make it go super slow mo or really, really fast. But remember to have a good Stop Motion Animation you need to have at least 10 frames per second.

After my friend G went home, I made some Stop Motion Animations with our Lego minifigs! These were fun to make but much harder to move the minifigs because they are much smaller than the Stikbots.

Now this is where it gets really exciting. Last week we had to go to Kmart and while we were looking in the toys because my little brother likes to look at the toys, I found some more Stikbots. I was really excited to find a Green Screen Stikbot Studio kit. Mummy brought it for me and L to use because we have been making lots of Stop Motion Animations.

The Green Screen Stikbot Studio has both a green screen and a blue screen (it's just a big cardboard box with a green side and a blue side, two smaller cardboard boxes with green sides and blue sides on them, two Stikbots and what looks like an art easel that can hold your phone while you're creating Stop Motion Animations. The easel is really clever because it will keep your phone in the same position while you create your Stop Motion Animation.

Did you know that a green screen, or sometimes a blue screen, is used when filming movies and not just stop motion movies, so that a different background can be added to the final movie. The actors and actresses would film their movie screens on a green screen set and then the movie editors would add the background in later. It's sometimes known as Chroma Key Compositing. Green and Blue are the two colours most different from our skin so it makes it easier for the movie editors to change the screen background without cutting off the actors and actresses body parts!!

There are a lot of movies that I have watched that have used green screen sets when they have been making the movie - Mary Poppins Returns used a blue screen in some of their sets, all of The Avengers movies, Alice in Wonderland, Captain America, Iron Man, Transformers, Thor Ragnarok, The Power Rangers Movie and heaps more.

When we went to use the green screen with our Stikbots, we couldn't work out how to use it because the green screen on the app wasn't working. We worked out that we had to turn the green screen feature of the app on. We found this out by pressing the different icons on the screen because there aren't any instructions in the kit! I think that whoever makes this kit, needs to put instructions in the Green Screen Kit on how to turn the feature on in the app.

When you first go into either the Create Movie or Capture Photo icons there is a flower icon on the bottom left. When you press that icon, four more icons open up. To activate the green screen feature you need to press the small green rectangle.

When the next screen opens up, it will probably look like the image underneath this. See how the tabs are grey? You need to slide the on tab across so that the screen looks like the next image.

When the tabs are coloured you can change the background from Green screen to Blue screen. You can also change the Colour roll Backdrop.

In Colour roll Backdrop you can choose from the Stikbot Library or you can choose a picture that is on your phone. We tried to use a backdrop from Mummy's phone, but it didn't turn out properly. I would recommend using a backdrop from the Stikbot Library as there are quite a few to choose from and the backdrops are really good.

This is what the picture will look like when the green screen is on. Can you see the Stikbot at the back of this picture? See how it looks like it has a ghost head? That's because it's head is green so it blends into the green screen. You have to make sure that if you are using the green screen, you don't use characters that are green. And if you use the blue screen, the characters can't be blue.

I made a few green screen Stop Motion animations and Mummy helped me to make some props to use. We made fire flames, some cardboard logs for a fire and some tents.

Now I wanted to show you some of my green screen Stop Motion Animations that I have made. I prefer to use the Stikbots because they are easier to move around and Mummy helped me with the Lego Minifigs.

I would really recommend the Stikbot sets to anyone who is interested in learning how to make Stop Motion Animations. They are really easy to use and lots of fun. It looks like there are other sets that you can buy like a set that has a Dino theme with lots of different accessories for the Stikbots and Stikbot Action Packs that have helmets, plastic hair and musical instruments for the Stikbots in it. I really would like to get a few more sets but we couldn't find them. Playing with the Stikbots, the green screen and the app has helped me to learn a lot about making Stop Motion Animations.

Now my Mummy wants to add something. Thank you for reading my review on Stop Motion Animation and the Stikbots.

From O 😍💕😻😸

Stop Motion Animation is a topic that O has always been interested in so it was wonderful to find a product that she could use to create her own animations. We found them in the toy section of Kmart but I would imagine that you should be able to find them in other department stores and toy shops.

While all of the Stop Motion Animation is done during screen time, we figured that at least O and L having been doing something constructive! O and L have also been doing a little unschooling when making their animations as they've had to work out how best to move the characters so that the movement looks semi natural on screen, which colours work best on the green screen and many other aspects of Stop Motion Animation. Oh and if your children do ask to use your device to create some Stop Motion Animation, be prepared that your devices battery may go very flat. The app is brilliant but it does chew up battery power!

22/8/19 Edited 

We've since found two more Stop Motion Apps that O also loves to use.

Stop Motion Studio is a free App available in Google Play which O finds much easier to use. We also found an App called Green Screen Video (also available for free on Google Play) and as the name suggests it can be used to create live green screen videos.

STEM Tinker Crates by KiwiCo

**** Please note that I do not receive commissions of any kind for this review. It is simply a product that we have found useful. ****

Several months ago I stumbled across a company on a social media site which caught my attention and my inner science geek interest …. KiwiCo.

Both and O and L love science and doing extra curricular unschooling activities like making slime, researching topics of interest on the internet, digging for dinosaur bones and shark teeth and so on. So when I spotted the products that KiwiCo produce, I immediately thought that my little superheroes would love them.

KiwiCo are a company that makes STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) activities accessible, engaging and fun for kids. The company produces a number of crates for children that are along the STEAM line of interest.

They offer monthly (or 3 monthly, 6 monthly or 12 monthly) subscriptions for various ages - Tadpole Crate is an Explore and Discover project for ages 0 to 36 months, Koala Crate is a play and learn project for ages 3 to 4, Kiwi Crate is a science and art project for ages 5 to 8, Atlas Crate is a Geography and Culture project for ages 6 to 11, Doodle Crate is an Art and Design project for ages 14 plus, Tinker Crate is a Science and Engineering project for ages 9 to 16 and the Eureka Crate is an Engineering and Design project for ages 14 to 104! You can opt out of the subscription at any stage.

I chose the Tinker Crate which is aimed at children between the ages of 9 to 16 years. Both of my little superheroes, but especially O, love their science. I also figured that the Tinker Crate would extend on O's knowledge of science. The Tinker Crate is a STEM project and each crate (read project box) contains the materials needed to create the STEM project, an amazing blueprint that has detailed step-by-step instructions on how to make the project, a Tinker Zine which is essentially a magazine with additional science activities and experiments based on the STEM project and access to video tutorials.

Initially I wasn't sure what to expect so when our first tinker crate arrived, I was a little apprehensive. Was the crate going to be worth the monthly fee? Would O and L enjoy the STEM project in the tinker crate? And the all important question, would I need to gather any extra resources?

I needn't have worried. O and L loved the crate. While the crate is aimed at O's age group, L thoroughly enjoyed helping to make the project. And the project stimulated and extended on O's interest in STEM activities. The crate contained everything that O and L needed for the project, except for a pair of scissors.

The first crate that we received was a Spin Art Project. O and L assembled a Spin Art machine, using science and engineering principles to create some amazing art projects. 

While the blueprints were quite easy for O to read and follow, it did challenge her understanding of how things worked. She also did an amazing job at explaining the steps on the blueprint to L.

Once the little superheroes had created their spin art machine, they then experimented with the placement of the resistors on the breadboard to increase and decrease the speed of their spin art machine. 

O was fascinated by the concept that simply by moving the resistors on the breadboard, they were able to change the speed of the motor - the path of least resistance caused the motor to spin fast. The path with the most resistance caused the motor to spin at a slower rate. L was fascinated by the patterns that they were creating. I loved that they were both so busy having fun, that they didn't realise that they were doing lots of learning!!

One of the best things about the spin art machine was that there was no mess - all of the paint was contained within the crate that the components came in! Once they had finished making and playing with their spin art machine, O asked "Can you get another crate please, that was fun!" Sure can kiddo, we just need to wait a month until the next crate arrives!!

We recently received our second Tinker Crate - a STEM project to create a mini planetarium. As soon as I read what the project was, I knew that O would love it as her main interest is anything to with space. She loves getting out into the backyard at night time to do a spot of star gazing!. This weekend just gone, O had her bestie G over for a sleepover and on Sunday afternoon they were looking for something "interesting" to do, so I brought the Tinker Crate out and they both got right into the project.

Once O and G had completed the planetarium, they took it into O's bedroom to test it out. We had a little readjusting of the inside of the planetarium as there were a few gaps in the panels but wow, for a planetarium made out of cardboard, the stars projected really well. The tricky part was finding that the stars could project onto!

The girls then decided that they wanted to take the planetarium to school the following day to show their teacher. Not only was their teacher impressed, but they also had the opportunity to take the planetarium up to show one of the school's deputy principals (and the school student leaders who just happened to be meeting with the deputy principal.) O and G were very chuffed after school when they were telling me all about how they received a Deputy Principal's award for the project!!

I would highly recommend the Tinker Crate to anyone who is wanting to extend on their child's interest in STEM principles. The Tinker Crate also me curious about the other products available from KiwiCo! Watch this space for future developments!

Introducing Ulla! A water hydration system.

*** Please note that I do not receive commissions of any description for this review. It is simply a product that we have found incredibly useful. ***

As I have mentioned in numerous posts on previous occasions, we have always struggled to get O to drink water on a more regular basis. Through talking with her previous therapist in Perth we now know that the struggles that we had are in part due to her sense of interoception still developing.

When we first met with O's therapy team one of the managers, thank you Bianca, mentioned to us about a gadget that you could place onto a water bottle to help you to remember to drink water.

Well, I couldn't get home fast home to research this gadget.

The name of the gadget is Ulla and as their website states Ulla is a smart attachment that fits on any water bottle (plastic or glass) via a silicone band that fits around the bottle. Ulla itself is a small tear dropped shaped object that clips onto the band. Ulla comes in a range of colours and designs depending on where you order it from. The US website does have a larger range of designs than the Australian website.

The Ulla works by following an optimal hydration cycle of 40 minutes. Every time you take a drink from your bottle, or glass, Ulla blinks as it detects when the drink bottle is tilted. After 40 minutes if you haven't taken a drink, Ulla will start to blink madly at you.

When I started reading about Ulla, I immediately knew that this was exactly the type of reminder that we have been searching for for O. Ulla is discrete and would blend in with the drink bottles that O likes to use. Ulla doesn't make any noise so it wouldn't be distracting to O or to her classmates. It sounded perfect. And Ulla is powered by a battery that is replaceable - even better!

The first one that I purchased, I used myself at work just to check that it was in fact useful. Hooley dooley, I don't think that I have drunk that much water in one day - the flashing reminder was definitely useful.

Our first Ulla arrived on a Thursday afternoon and I used it on the Friday. The weekend that followed, O bugged me for the entire weekend to put Ulla onto her drink bottle - "When can I use it? Huh? Huh? Mum? Mum? When? Please?" She was super excited to start using it straight away.

I am happy to report that Ulla is paying for itself in the consumption of water that O is going through. Since putting Ulla onto O's water bottle, we've not had one day where she has not drunk enough water. Touch wood, she hasn't become dehydrated once since putting the Ulla on her water bottle.

I found Ulla so useful that I purchased another one for myself to use. It is such a great reminder and it is a product that I would happily recommend to others, especially children, who are struggling to remember to drink enough water throughout the day.

So where can I get an Ulla for myself I hear you ask? Well ....

They are available from Axon Australia and direct from their website. Just don't do what I did the second time  I ordered an Ulla - I didn't realise that I had ordered from the US website and was becoming quite cranky when Ulla took about a month to arrive. Oops! Note to self - check where you order it through!