Stop-Motion Animation / Claymation

 "Develop your ball bounce and pendulum animation and post results onto module blogs. These will form part of your final showreel for assessment.

Over the next week, please continue to explore stop-motion animation, around the theme of 'obstacle'. Use objects at home for this animation. Create a simple sequence that tells a cohesive story for next week that we will review in class."

INSPIRATION

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2NJu_MsmQc

- One Ball Stop Motion Challenge

- Very fluid claymation

- Clay always very smooth, lots of frames where appropriate to ensure smooth movement of the subject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQi66EHwJV0

- No Man's Land by Leo Wright Studios

- Stop motion animation using various materials

- Very atmospheric, made me cry in the exhibition

Models for Corpse Bride

 

 - Tim Burton stop motion animation

 - Foundation in Art = trip to Manchester galleries

 - Real figures used during creation of well-known   animations

 - Very impressive to see in-person

BALL BOUNCE

- Sorry it's sideways

- Ball bounce initial animation

- Good use of squash and stretch, good use of timing as ball reaches peak of its bounce before coming back down and gaining speed

- Good exaggeration of the squash at the bottom of first bounce

- Could have set camera up on a prop to keep it level, background is a bit choppy

- Returned to FlipaClip and added additional motion lines

- Good use of available materials to create convincing movement in animation

PENDULUM

- Sorry it's sideways

- Least successful initial animation due to choppy background; could have propped camera up on something to reduce the movement

- Could have exaggerated timing a little more

- Could have turned paper landscape to have a more exaggerated arc

Returned to FlipaClip to add animation lines

OBSTACLES

- Taken inspiration from the One Ball Stop Motion Challenge

- Most successful of three initial animations

- Tried to give the ball a personality, using squash and stretch to represent it reacting to things, and exaggeration and timing to tell its story

- Returned to FlipaClip to add bits of drawing and illustration to make it feel like a comic-style animation

Final 'Ball Is A Murderer' animation

OBSTACLES II

- Wanted to try storyboarding and make something fun and playful

- Wanted to use an opossum as my character as I've decided recently that I love them

- Simple creatures and an even further simplified design to make from plasticine

- Removed feet entirely as they wouldn't hold up the weight of the rest of the opossum

- Props to be pirate ship, a claw clip, and a mouse lamp

- Own cool and dynamic objects and wanted to make a story out of them

- Wanted to play with staging and close-ups, and make the clay opossum travel through the ship

- Eventually gets trapped in claw clip at the end and loops back round to the start

Was to be set up on bed (blue blanket = water)

Would be shot on iPad

- Didn't work out

- Couldn't animate opossum well in time left

- Had too much of a preconceived idea of how it would turn out due to the storyboarding

- Decided to just do straight-ahead animation using simply a ball of plasticine

- Bye, little opossum

Used same background but more solid ground

OUTCOME

EVALUATION

- Knew I wouldn't be able to animate entire sequence in one sitting

- Got around this by having the two balls merge and cover camera; if camera angle or lighting shifted then it wouldn't be as noticeable

- Good use of secondary animation in drawn elements

- Straight ahead animation worked much better for this project

- Squash and stretch used effectively

- Good use of timing and pacing

- Could have benefitted from sound effects