After we reviewed apps for creating story books with students, today’s post features a collection of educational apps students can use to design animated cartoons. These can be used for a number of educational activities including: digital story telling, multi-media literacy-based projects, expressive writing, communication activities, and many more. Check them out and share with your colleagues.
1- Toonastic 3D
This is by far our favourite app in this collection. Toonastic 3D allows you go “draw, animate, and narrate your own cartoons. It’s as easy as play. Just move your characters around on screen, tell your story, and Toontastic records your voice and animations and stores it on your device as a 3D video”. Some of its main features include:
- “A giant toy box full of swashbuckling pirates, transforming robots, nefarious villains, and many more characters and settings to spark kids’ imaginations
- Design your own characters with 3D drawing tools
- Add yourself to your adventures with photos, and customize the color of your characters
- Mix your soundtrack with dozens of built-in songs
- Choose from three Story Arcs for digital storytelling (Short Story, Classic, & Science Report)
- Export videos to your Photos library to share with family and friends
- An idea lab chock full of kid-created stories, characters, and settings to inspire new adventures”.
This app enables students to create their own animated shows using both audio and animation. You can “pick out your actors and backdrops, drag them on to the stage, and tap record. Your movements and audio will be recorded in real time for playback later”. Some of its features include:
- “Create an actor from a photo
- Use a photo as a backdrop for your storytelling
- zoom and rotate your characters using two fingers
- flip them around with a double tap
- a wide variety of creative characters to download (including famous talk show hosts and politicians)
- limitless possibilities of story creations
- buy the director’s pass and receive ALL current and FUTURE content!”
3- ScratchJR
This app allows students to use their coding skills to design their own interactive stories and games. “By snapping together graphical programming blocks, children can make characters move, jump, dance, and sing. In the process, children learn to solve problems, design projects, and express themselves creatively on the computer. They also use math and language in a meaningful and motivating context, supporting the development of early-childhood numeracy and literacy. With ScratchJr, children don’t just learn to code, they code to learn.”
4- FlipaClip: Cartoon Animation
FlipaClip is an excellent app for creating animated drawings. You can “draw cartoons with frame-by-frame animation to bring them to life, add audio and share your animated works with the world”. Some of its features include:
- ” Draw with practical tools like Brushes, Lasso, Fill, Eraser, Ruler shapes, and insert Text with multiple font options all for free!
- Use up to 3 animation layers for free!
- Animating frame-by-frame is super easy with an intuitive animation timeline and practical tools
- Easily add and edit audio clips using up to six audio tracks for free.
- Add dialogue to your animation with voice recording!
- Animate images you import or draw on top of your videos.
- Add rotoscopes to your videos.
- Share your animation anywhere!
- Post to TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or Tumblr.”
5- Tellagami
Another excellent app for creating animated videos or Gamis. Using the pre-designed characters students can simply add audio (e.g., their voice) and text, customize background and get the selected character to utter the provided input. Some of its features include:
- ” Mix and match your character & background
- Record your voice or type a message
- Resize character and place it in the scene
- Personalize with a photo background
- Share via Facebook, Twitter, email or SMS
- View Gami as a web URL on all devices”
You may also want to check this post from Educational App store for more apps and rescources for creating animated videos and cartoons.
