Research and Pre-Production
Strong
examples of Stop-Motion animation
My favourite stop motion animation
series, and arguably the most well-known is the Aardman animation series of
short films, “Wallace and Gromit”, created by Nick Park.
Specifically, I mean
the character of Gromit, who although a main character has absolutely no lines
of dialogue in any of the films. The animators at Aardman animation studios
have managed to imbue the character with humanlike characteristics which convey
the characters emotion just as well, if not better than spoken words. He simply
raises his eyebrow which can show he is happy, or worried depending on the
context of the scene. If his brow is down, he can seem angry or even determined
to solve a problem.
Wallace and Gromit
fits into the category of Claymation, which means that it’s a stop motion
animation that uses Clay or plasticine figures.
Another good example
of stop motion animation I have come across that could be useful when
considering the design of our own project are “Proteigon”, Directed by Steven
Braind 2012. This stop motion animation uses various paper shapes which are
manipulated by a man and morph impossibly on screen into paper cubes and then
back to paper. This is animation is what we call a pixelmation, which means
there are photographs of live actors that are animated.
My final example I
have found is “The Animation of Man” by Amanda Nedermeijer 2012. This short is
very useful if our group considers hand drawn stop motion animation. Although
this form of stop motion takes a lot longer to produce then others, it can
produce very fluid results.
References
Nedermeijer, A. “The Animation Of Man”
(2012) [ONLINE] http://vimeo.com/44149205
Accessed 30/08/2013
Braind, S. “Proteigon” (2012) [ONLINE] http://vimeo.com/33480080 Accessed
30/08/2013
Shaw, S. “Stop Motion Craft Skills for
model animation”. Published 2004 by Focal Press (Pages 3, 4 – Chapter 1 –
Playing God) Wallace and Gromit. Accessed 30/08/2013
Production
Our group works on the projects assets.
A sample recording of the audio for the animation
Final Animation
Evaluation
My first project on returning to Dundee College for my
second year in the Computer Arts HND was a group activity with the purpose to
create a stop motion animation.
As a group, this year we worked well together as a team, especially during the pre-production of the project. We got down to business right away, unlike previous years. We each came up with a possible idea, pitched it to the group and chose the strongest idea to progress with. When tasks needed to be done, I stepped up as someone who delegated the tasks accordingly, which the rest of the team didn't seem to mind.
This was our best asset I think, that we worked well
together. Nobody was afraid to chip in an idea or two, although I think some of
the first year students were a little shy at first.
Our production of the stop motion animation however wasn't as thought out or refined as it could have been. A lot more planning should
have gone into the little things, like our environment and the actual animation
of our rocket character. The rocked was planned to include some animation
principles such as squash and stretch, anticipation and ease in, ease out. We
accomplished this for the most part with three separate rocket shapes that were
swapped in and out but I think this would have been a lot smoother and more
believable if we had refined this more
by adding in further stages of the deformed rocket as it moves away from the
planet, monster etc.
If I could start this project from scratch, I would make
sure that our timings were spot on so that our audio track fully synced up with
our frames. This was difficult to tell though, because for some reason the
final animation looked very laggy in the final export.
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