A workshop for participants aged 8-16
This workshop was created by the Young People and Families team for State Library of Queensland’s Summer Festival: Tech+ Stories + Play program in December 2017.
Remix free-use digital images to create loop-based animations with your fingertips. Using the live animation and VJ* app ‘Tag Tool’ it’s easy to manipulate and re-contextualize historical images and illustrations, combined with your own drawn creations, to create visual mash-ups that can be exported and shared.
5 hours, including a 45 minute and 15 minute break.
Facilitation of this workshop requires
Completing this workshop resource in full yourself as preparation for the workshop will act as adequate training for all of the above.
Once you've learnt the basics of Tagtool, experiment to learn more and make adaptations to the workshop plan as required. The software feels tricky at first, and has quite an innovative user interface, but once you’ve understood it’s functionality it feels very intuitive.
4 hours total, plus 1 hour of breaks.
15 minutes | Introduction & Safety Briefing |
20 Minutes | Project Briefing & Discussion |
60 Minutes | Exploring Tagtool |
15 minutes | Snack Time! |
40 minutes | Creating with Tagtool Part 1 |
45 minutes | Lunch Time! |
60 minutes | Creating with Tagtool Part 2 |
25 minutes | Sharing & Debrief |
I set this room up with multiple stations for individuals to work, with several participants per table, all with proximity to the front of the room where the screen was positioned.
I made sure the Tagtool app was pre-installed and then tested on all iPads. Please note that the app requires software iOS 9 or higher. To upgrade from the 'Free' version to the 'Pro' version, inside the app on one of the iPads purchase ‘Tagtool Pro’ whilst logged in to your Apple account. This purchase will then be available on any device logged in on the same account. When you then go in to upgrade on your other devices, click 'Restore Purchases'.
Connect the presenter iPad to your Apple TV and use it in ‘Screen Mirroring’ mode. Then, in the Tagtool app, turn on 'Demo Mode' by selecting it in the Menu. If 'Demo Mode' is not turned on then you will see the Tagtool canvas output screen rather on the projector rather than a mirror of the Tagtool workspace.
I also pre-printed all the digitised collection materials from public domain collections, printed in an A4 format, having scaled images to fit the maximum size possible on each A4 page. Here are the files that I used.
app_illustration_mash_up_1.pdf app_illustration_mash_up_1.pdf
(10 minutes)
Upon entry to the workshop, I ask participants to sit on the floor in a circle in a clear space away from workstations. I also ask them not to touch any of the equipment on the workstations until the are instructed to do so.
A strong and through introduction is important for:
Introductions can include:
I like to choose a game that everyone will have the opportunity to succeed at, regardless of their athletic ability. I also try to choose a game that is based on a process of focus and concentration, rather than one based on physical exertion.
The safety briefing for this workshop can run as follows:
(20 minutes)
A clear briefing helps participants understand what they are in the workshop to achieve, an allows them to self-direct their focus as they work through each step of the workshop process. Participants who don’t understand what they are working towards and have no means of figuring out where they are up to in a greater process are more likely to lack focus.
So - I briefly unpack each part of the process. Having the workshop schedule breakdown somewhere in the room will help participants orientate where they are up to in the process an where they are heading next (or when lunch is happening - very important information).
This workshop can be unpacked through the following steps.
Facilitate a discussion to give context to the content that you will be creating throughout the workshop. Start with exploring the idea that animation is no longer the domain of the professional, and that GIF animations have permeated internet culture. Some talking points could be:
Discuss what content is available on the internet for us to freely use and transform. Talking points could include:
State Library of Queensland is a collector of all things to-do with Queensland. SLQ has millions of items in their collection, including lots of awesome images that are:
Discuss the idea that creative people all over world are already making amazing new animations from old images found in libraries and show some examples from a competition for this kind of animation called GIF IT UP. Use your iPad connected to the projector or display and browse through GIF IT UP page on GIF HUB and look at some examples of GIF animations created using remixed collections.
Tagtool is a multi-touch gesture based interface, so it’s important to have a good grasp of a variety of multi-touch gestures before you even pick up an iPad. Before you hand out iPads to start the hands on session of the workshop, teach the gestures that you’ll need to the participants. This seems like simple stuff, but really comes in useful down the line!
Gestures to cover include:
Tagtool is an app that requires two hands to operate, and often you will be required to do two gestures at once, on each hand. Ask the participants to respond to your instructions. For example.
For this section of the workshop, make sure ‘Learn Mode’ is selected. This will cause Tagtool to show you the functionality of the interface whilst it is in use. Encourage participants to tap around the pane and read the text that appears to learn different functions.
There are two interfaces to Tagtool, Paint Mode which shows your paint pallete pane and paint functions, and Animate Mode which shows your animation layers pane, and animation functions.
Discuss paint mode as the illustration aspect of the app, an interface for creating visual content to animate. Learn the following functions.
Instruct participants to draw a shape with their chosen color, and to fill it in.
Discuss the concept of layers, the idea that you can have different elements of your image in different layers, so they can be edited and animated independently. Demonstrate layers by:
Ask participants to press the ANIMATE button to toggle to the Animation mode of Tagtool. On the left, they will see the Layers pane, with the three layers they have just created (shape, eyes, mouth). These layers will be visualized as rectangles.
Ask the participants to drag the layers up and down to re-arrange the layers, where they should notice that the top of the pane is the rear of the image, and the bottom of the pane is the front of the image. Ask the m to resort the layers to make sure the head shape is at the rear of the image, with the mouth and eyes on top.
Ask participants to tap the layers, either in the layers pane, or on the image themselves, and notice that the layer selected turns yellow in the canvas pane, whereas the deselected layers are grey.
Instruct participants to tap and hold the PANELS button with one finger, then with the other, tap on the arrow buttons to ensure that the panels around the canvas pane are not hidden.
Participants can then follow these instructions to animate their first layer (the shape/head).
Ask participants to repeat these steps with each of the two other layers to separately animate both the eye and mouth. The end result should be an animated face with eyes and mouth that move separately. If they wish, they can add additional layers and animation loops to the image. You can create more than one animation loop on a single layer.
To preview animations, ask the participants to tap the FULLSCREEN button in the top menu row, and hold up their iPads to show each other their progress.
The Group function allows you to group layers together so they behave as a single animated layer. This allows for complex layers animated in sync to be connected, and re-arranged, duplicated, or saved. To use the group function participants can:
Deck is a functionality that allows you to save components of, or the entire animation for future use. You can save individual, or grouped layers to your Decks. To save to decks, instruct participants to:
Tagtool not only allows users to paint and animate content created inside the app, but to edit and animate content such as photographs created outside the app. This is where the potential for remixing free-use collections comes into play.
Ask participants to:
Once a layer has been created or imported, it can then be edited using Paint Mode. Ask participants to follow these instructions to learn how to edit layers.
Once a layer has been made available for editing in ‘Paint Mode’ by following the above process, it is possible to erase the parts of the image that you do not require in order to animated specific parts of the image. For example, and using an image containing a butterfly, the butterfly can be extracted by erasing the rest of the image. That butterfly can then be animated as a layer. Ask participants to follow these instructions to extract the foreground object/figure from an imported image.
At this point, participants know all the functions they need to, and are now ready to be given the brief for their collection remix task.
(15 minutes)
Snack Break. An extremely important aspect of any workshop.
I always make sure my groups take the snack break in a different space, preferably outside, to keep your workshop space focused, and allowing for any high energy randomness to take place elsewhere.
Before the participants re-enter the room, I often get them to shake off their outside energy, and reconnect with their indoor focused energy. I also remind them not to touch anything when they re-enter and to wait for instructions.,
(40 minutes)
Now it's time to give the participant their creative task.
Ask them to think about:
(45 minutes)
In this time, support and assist participants for the next as they complete their task.
If participants have completed their task, you can assist them in exporting animation
There is no in-built video export function in Tagtool, however it’s possible to use the in-built screen recording function of the iPad to export the animations.
If you’re not already aware of how to screen record from your iPad, follow these instructions to learn how!
If you’re using an older iPad model you may need to look into other processes for exporting the videos, using Quick Time Player and a PC or Mac Computer.
These recordings will export as .MP4 video files. You can convert these .MP4 files to GIF using a website like the http://www.ezgif.com, allowing animations to be shared easily on social media. If you do share them on socials, please tag SLQ or use the hashtag #appanimationmashup so we can check out your amazing creations!
That is the end of this App Animation Mash Up workshop resource. We hope you find it useful!
For questions in regards to this resource please contact the Young People and Families team at State Library of Queensland on ypf@slq.qld.gov.au or on 07 3842 9876.