Another thoughtful (bored) Kitty

Well... I didn't know it would take so long... As I am not used to gimp, it takes me a while to try out different things, different brushes, shadows etc. I am realizing that as we had to simplify the story, I also can't do a perfect work and I need to simplify the picture (that'll appear a few seconds on the screen... siiiighs such a waste^^)

You can see with the hair how I got lazy and didn't do all the shade/light...

But I am happy with the result :) it is fun, even though it takes a long time to do it...

Good evening friends !

KITTY !!! Finally !

Hello eveybody !!! Finally, I had lots of problems with Gimp, partially because I saw a tutorial on the internet but it didn't work as well with my gimp :) It is not perfect, but it feels good to see some progress in the work !!! I am wondering if the choice of color is wise... especially with the belt...

tutorialThis should be the second slide,  or the first drawing ! well... still got 10ish to go... I know, I'm late... I know...

Oh !

Just realized I forgot the blush ! shoot... 

Well have a nice week end, and good luck for those who aren't done with their slideshows yet :)

ps: if you're interested in knowing how to do that kind of drawing on gimp, here's a tutorial that could help you!

Our final story

And here is our story! It took us several weeks to come up with ideas that we all agreed on and our story has changed quite a bit as you'll see :)

      1) Kitty, a little girl lives in England (map England)

2) She goes to visit her grandfather. (unhappy face, red haired, little dress)

3) “It is raining, I am bored” (looks outside the window, it is raining, looks bored)

4) “Go, take a look upstairs!” (grandpa points at the ceiling with a big smile, we see the stairs)

5) Upstairs, Kitty finds a big trunk and in the trunk… (still the stairs, a trunk, Kitty kneeling in front of it)

6) (Title: Animals around the world)

7) (She opens the book)

8) In Asia there are… (zoom)

9) Pandas!

10) (pouf! Photo)

11) Wow, look a black and white panda

12) In Australia there are… (zoom)

 13) Kangaroos! (photo)

14) Look a brown kangaroo and its baby

15) In South America there are… (zoom)

 16) Parrots! (photo)

17) Look a parrot - it is red, yellow and blue!

18) At the South Pole there are… (zoom)

 19) Seals! (photo)

20) Look a grey seal!

21) In Africa there are… (zoom)

 22) Lions! (photo)

23) Look an orange lion (Roar!)

24) “What are you doing, honey?” (mum opens  trunk)  “Is the lion there?”

As you can see we dropped a lot, we hope our story is still interesting enough! The next step will be finish the drawings and put everything on VoiceThread... Piece of cake! 

We thought about hiding butterflies in several slides and make the children look for them at the end. We didn't add them finally but the idea remains an option.

Just a few words !

Hi guys!  Janette is back :) 

We are in a world of new technologies but technology has been giving a lot of trouble these days!! It’s not easy being a student with no home internet access (Yeah it sucks -_-'') and my laptop has some serious issues too!! (And I'm broke can't buy a next one now ... LoL)

But anyways I'm here now and by the way, Cecile has been doing a create job so far keeping the blog lively.

Humm what can I say?

Oh yeah! I had some technical difficulties with Audacity and Free screen to video before the holiday break. Unfortunately I couldn't convert Free screen to video so that the teacher could have it but then ... Now I know (and hope that everyone else know too) we have to save the file in FLV format!

Our story line started good but, we still haven't finish writing the story yet and time is really against us ! I was kind of disappointed when the teacher said that we couldn't use pictures from the internet because I felt like I wasted my time looking for pictures and we can't even use them anymore. Now we have to speed up our work because drawing all the different landscapes for our story is going to be a bit difficult. But I know we'll make it :) 

Cecile showed us some drawing she did for our main character and I found them pretty cool and she’s quite talented! I can hardly draw a flower LoL.

This week I didn't do anything much in class (because I didn't have my laptop) but the rest of the class created an account on Voicethread and got familiar with it (though I already had an account and got used to it so, I didn't miss much).  But they also installed WORDLE!

What is WORDLE (wordle.net)?

Wordle is an application to create "word clouds" / "tag clouds". It's a graphic representation of words taken from a text or words you type in.  It’s amazing to see that it automatically put important words in bigger characters (when the word is written/ repeated several times)!  This is awesome because you can copy and paste a text and get the main topic before reading it; Wordle is good at summarizing. :)    

Wordle can help to create guidelines for an assignment or a debate, I guess. Or, introduce an activity: maybe put different words on a same topic and having the students to discovery the topic based on the link they find between the words.  

Oh! We have to install GIMP and Brintha told us about Sketchbook application but I haven’t check none of them yet so stay tuned, I’ll soon be back with a next article ;)   

Wordle of our blog ;)

Week 5 : slide show !

Hello everybody ! 

So, the week before vacation we started working on the slide show for the story ! We went through the story in a more precise way, deciding what vocabulary and what event would be linked together !
It was so hard ! 
I mean, not that it is complicated to invent a story, the difficult part is to make a story that the children would understand ! 
sum up:
-We have to create a story (which means that it has to have an interesting guideline) 
-for children with limited vocabulary (which narrows greatly the possibilities of story"events")
-at least 12 slideshows... 

I guess the problem is just that I went wild imagining a complicated story. What we simplified at the beginning wasn't enough. We need to simplify more and more our story, which gives us the responsibility of being conceited (sidenote for the teacher :) I was thinking of the french word "concis" but this one came up - #wrong# - and it's not the first time happening...)
hum, the responsibility of being more precise/concise/brief (thanks Googletrad). It obliges us to pay more attention to what we write, and in case you haven't noticed, I love to take time to explain, tell, chat, blabber... (yes, I also love synonyms)

So, all that to say that what we imagined during the first storydraft needs to be changed... 

The teacher also gave us a little explanatory of the children's level we're dealing with. So we decided to focus on colors, weathers (sunny, rainy, cloudy...), feelings (I'm bored, tired...), human body (head to toes), movements (jumping, stomping...).

Now that I read again what we wrote I kinda have more hope for our story :) it'll be just great for the children ! It is very interesting to create with a goal. Your creation needs to match the other's ability, it's a "framed art" ^^

What else did I learn ? Oh yeah, "carpe" in French is "carp" in English... Hard-hey ? (as Canadian would say)

Well, good night !