Animate to invisibility

1. Use paper that is no larger than A4 size.

2. Use a pencil to make a detailed drawing of a person involved in an activity such as running, leaping, kicking or hitting a ball.

3. Add marks to your drawing to emphasise movement, texture and other details.

Digitise your drawing and save it in a folder you create called ‘animation’.

1. Digitise your drawing by scanning it or taking a digital photograph of it.

2. Save your digital drawing or place a copy of it in a new folder called ‘animation’. Save the image as a JPEG (.jpg). End the filename with ‘1’, for example, soccer1.jpg or skating1.jpg.

3. Edit your image if necessary, for example, straighten it, crop it or reduce its size.

4. Save the image again.

Create a sequence of images in which you erase the drawing little by little. The smaller the area erased in each image, the more effective your animation will be.

1. Open your image in a graphics editing program such as Adobe Photoshop Elements.

2. Select the Eraser tool and erase a small detail of your image.

3. Go to Save as… (File menu) and save the revised image as a new file by changing the number at the end of the filename to ‘2’, for example, soccer2.jpg.

   Make sure the location is the ‘animation’ folder.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the drawing is completely erased. Remember in step 3 to save each new image with the next higher number.

Make your animated artwork by sequencing the images in software such as Microsoft PowerPoint:

1. Open your images in PowerPoint by creating a new photo album (from the Insert tab).

2. On the Transitions tab, set the slide to advance after 00:00.02 seconds and click Apply to all.

3. On the Slide Show tab, click Set Up Slide Show and choose Loop continuously until ‘Esc’.

Optional: After your drawing is erased, make it come back again. In Slide Sorter view, duplicate all the slides and then manually rearrange them in reverse order.

Step-by-step guide (.pdf 322kB) for animating your artwork.