Have you tried making animation before? Are you fascinated at how animation is made? Now Hue Animation Studio contains everything a budding animator needs to begin creating stop motion animation videos. Children can discover, imagine and create stop-motion animation through powerful, easy-to-use, animation software complete with Hue’s market leading Plug ‘n’ Play HD camera with built-in microphone and a unique flexible neck for unlimited positioning options.
The software (used in schools and at home) helps children to create simple visual adaptations using toys, modelling clay, play figures and stop-frame animation techniques. The process of animating with the Hue Animation Studio encourages children to learn a diverse range of skills in both a fun and stimulating way. They can create a story, create characters, make them from clay or plasticine, design and make sets, compose soundtracks or select appropriate recorded music to enhance a film.
We were lucky to be able to review this. Inside the box, you get:
- Hue HD camera
- Animation software
- User guide
- Plasticine
- 1.8 metre USB cable
Setting up is quite straight forward. You need to register and download the software through a link on your email address.
When the program starts, it will gives you two options: Create a New Project or Open a Saved project. As this is our first time using it, I created a new project. Positioning the camera is very easy. It is flexible and you are able to select to flip the camera vertically or horizontally. On our laptop, I have an in-built camera which the software defaults to and each time I have to reselect the source as the USB camera.
Before you create a movie, you will need props and space. We found that the plasticine provided was not very good quality. It sticks onto our fingers and it’s hard to mould an animal or character. I would suggest buying Play-Doh. This was the very first project we completed using a plastic turtle. It is a very simple clip with sounds. Adding sound to the clip is straightforward. I did find it hard to get the kids to speak on cue. I believe this will be easier with practice though.
This is behind-the-scenes:
This is our second project – Animals. This time, we used small plastic toys as our characters, white paper as the ground and a printed scenery. In this video, we had added text and frames by clicking the frame and editing it. It is very simple to add text, shapes or drawings. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/_0ezrirCDt0
This is behind-the-scene:
The software is easy to use and each button is big and self-explanatory. My children are only aged 4 and 5. They are too young to operate this by themselves but older children should not be a problem. To share on YouTube via the software, you must have at least 20 frames before it can be uploaded. If your clip is very short just like ours, you can upload it via the YouTube website. Overall, we love this animation kit and I rate it 5 stars out of 5! It is fun, allows the children to be more creative and encourages imagination. It is also useful for school projects or competition entries. I used this to create a Happy Birthday scene to enter a competition.
Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review, however, all thoughts and opinions remain our own.