A few years ago I gave one of my U.S. History classes an assignment to create short videos to recruit people to join Lewis & Clark’s Corps of Discovery. The assignment was designed to get students thinking about what it might have been like to plan for and go on that expedition. I gave my students free reign to create their videos however they wanted to. I had one young man in that class who created models on his computer, printed them, then used those models as the action figures in his video. It was a great little video and I wish that I had saved it. That student’s project was the first thing that I thought about when Fred Delventhal shared 123D Creature on Google+.
123D Creature is an iPad app produced by Autodesk which also produced 123D Catch. Using 123D Creature students can draw three dimensional model creatures on their iPads. The creatures start with a basic skeleton and the app users take it from there. Models can have many limbs, colors, positions, and special effects added to them. When the model is complete it can be saved and or printed.
If your students are writing short, science fiction stories they could use 123D Creature to create some models to use in their stories. This app does require iOS 6.0 or later.
