Hi! My name is Missy. I’m an artist and a blogger for PBS KIDS Utah. When I was little, cartoons weren’t made using computers yet. They were made using a series of drawings with tiny differences between each one. This way, when you flipped through the drawings, it looked like the characters were moving. This is called animation. I thought it would be fun to make our own little animated character using a flip book.
Supplies:
- Pencil
- Pen
- Scratch paper
- Post-It pad
Instructions:
- Think of an action you’d like your character to perform. You can choose a cartwheel, kicking a ball, doing jumping jacks, or anything you’d like.
- Think about the tiny movements it takes to perform that activity.
- Use your pencil and your scratch paper to draw each movement, step-by-step.
- Once you have a plan on your paper, use your pen on your Post-It pad and draw one movement on each page in the bottom right corner.
- Once you are done drawing all the movements of your character’s action, you can flip through the pad using your thumb in the upper right corner. It will look like your character is moving!
Wrap-up:
Sometimes it takes trial and error to get the movement to look right. This is why we use a pencil first, so you can erase. And sometimes repeating the same action on two pages in a row will help. Can you imagine drawing a whole cartoon like this like they did in the olden days? Be creative in animating your character and have fun!
