Darkfire Education Ltd’s Blog

A FANTASTIC day spent in Pheasant Bank to wrap up our partnership. Pete and Paul very privileged to be guests for 3 sharing assemblies in the school, showcasing the films, TV shows and animations made by the children. The day ended with parents coming into the final assembly to see how great their kids are!

Paul spent a day on the outskirts of Dudley using the schools own gear to teach around 50 children how to make great animated films. The children brought in a lot of toys and props to work with, some were a little big, but they made a brief appearance in a range of different stories.

A rare trip out with the children for Darkfire! Onto the bus and down to the gardens to take pictures of all things botanical. We all had a fantastic time (and didn’t get wet!) The pictures were then downloaded and manipulated with a focus on Colour – great results.

Paul encountered a few egg based jokes on his final session with Year 6 at Pheasant Bank. The children had modelled characters from well known traditional tales to animate. Humpty Dumpty featured in a number of the animations, with the children (and Miss Griffin) loving the cracking of the egg and the spreading of the yolk!!! Excellent results again, the children enjoyed animating using their new Fizzbook laptops.

Time to show the Year 3 children the skills needed to take a range of different photographs. They are going to make a comic strip linked to topic work based on Pompeii and Vesuvius. This involved learning how to use Comic Life over the two days as well as posing for and taking lots of great pictures.

We were very honoured to be invited down to give a brief presentation to 30+ Headteachers and then run a couple of workshops to finish off their conference on Creativity. Peter demonstrated Animation skills using a new piece of software we are using, whilst Paul challenged his group to head out and take photographs, then use these to make a Comic Strip. An excellent afternoon, hopefully enjoyed by all!

The world cup, super cars, dinosaurs and predators! Paul working with the Doncaster boys to make 4 TV shows relating to their chosen subjects. I don’t know about cars, but after all this, I feel like a bit of a petrol head! Well researched boys and very professionally filmed and edited.

Peter back up in Doncaster with the Year 4 children who are making an Ancient Egyptian film in the style of Blair Witch Project (kind of thing)! Some extreme acting, but cracking results!!

The second part of our project begins in Sheffield, with a shift from Year 6 to Year 3! First on the agenda is Stop Motion Animation – just a skills lesson first, then animating some well prepared Adventure stories!

Jim and Paul back up to Jericho for the last time until summer (and hopefully some fantastic weather). Year One (who are fantastic) working on their own animations they have planned about ‘Knight’s of Old’. Some beautiful models and backgrounds – the films were stunning. (They are on the school Moodle). Year 4 spent time with Jim recording their voice overs to go with the Victorian animations. Year 3 finished off their work linked to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, combining film and animation. The Year 2 made Photo Stories using favourite places around school that they had photographed.

A busy couple of days, but fantastic!

Jim and Paul still found time to enter the Queen’s Hotel pub quiz, coming a very respectable 3rd place – mint!