Ball Bounce Animation & Digital Typeface

Digital Animation seems to feel a little more intuitive, but still takes a minute to catch on. I was overwhelmed by the program at first (a good lesson as I think how to scaffold this for future students) but eventually picked up the basics. With all adobe programs, there are so many functions and features at our disposal that you reach a point of information overload, but I look forward to continuing to grow with the program. The ability to draw with the cintiq tablet and pair that with digital animation is so powerful!

I am a bit of a hand-letting geek. I started out early on with this book in my childhood, and my passion grew from there. I think it would be fun to introduce this to students as digital typography where they can use fonts that already exist to test and create compositions. I think hand lettering is sometimes a little exhausting and frustrating for some.

Lesson Ideas

If Type Were an Animal: Students could approach this assignment in a myriad of ways, from creating and animal out of type to creating a typeface inspired by their favorite animal… or maybe they use the animal tracks as type… this would be an open ended assignment
Digital Typography - Set to Music: Choose a song and create a typographic composition that evokes the feeling you get when you listen to that specific song
Kinetic Typography - Create a animated sequence of a single letter set to motion
Type in the Wild - Go for a walk and notice all the different typefaces you can find - which ones are similar? Which are different? What are they expressing?
Feather v.s. Bowling Ball - Animate a feather and then a bowling ball - observe the difference between the two