Stop-Motion Animation Tools and Cheapbook CONTEST Winners!

At the recent Association of Children's Museums conference in Phoenix, Joe Vena, from the Children's Museum of the Arts in NYC, gave a great workshop about "Art and Technology in Creative Learning" with a focus on stop-motion animation.

Two of the tools (one hardware, one software) Joe used in the workshop were great low cost ways to play with tech --- and they were new to me, so I'd thought I'd share them with ExhibiTricks readers.

The hardware tool is a relatively inexpensive USB camera to plug into computers to capture imagery called the IPEVO Point 2 View (P2V) Camera.  It's really easy to use and robust enough to hold up to being the primary tool for kids' workshops.

The software tool is iStopMotion by Boinx Software.  The software seems fairly intuitive to use, and a nice feature of iStopMotion is the "live preview" with a semi-transparent onion skinning effect that lets you see what your next step would look like before capturing the frame.

So check out the IPEVO and Boinx websites to grab some tools to get started with your own stop-motion animation projects!


Cheapbooks Greatest Hits CONTEST RESULTS

I recently highlighted the newly released Cheapbooks Greatest Hits in an ExhibiTricks post and held a contest in which two lucky folks would win a free digital copy of this fourth volume of the Exhibit Cheapbooks.

Honestly, after reading the heart-felt stories of existing and emerging museums trying their best to stretch their exhibit dollars, I've decided to award prizes to TEN lucky winners instead of two!   I'll be sending out emails to everyone who entered to let them know whether they won or not.  Thanks again to everyone for entering, and for your interest in the Cheapbooks.

Even if you didn't enter (or win!) the contest, you should order your own copy of Cheapbooks Greatest Hits by heading over to the ASTC website.

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