#stopmotionintro

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Introduction to Stop Motion Workshop 14th January 2019

Today we discussed  following up on our work with the Armature last week, with a different puppet constructed primarily out of recycled materials. This was contextualised with a talk on ethics within Art production by a former BA Animation Student, who has continued her education at NUA to study an MA, who showed us some of her work related to Environmentally Conscious Practice within art, including an animation project she worked on with students at Aylsham High School.

We also looked at some notable works of Stop Motion Animation that utilise recycled materials including:

Bobby Yeah made by Robert Morgan, utilising materials, most charmingly included discarded toenails!

The Quay Brothers’ Street of Crocodiles, which utilised old dolls, and household objects such as lightbulbs.

The work of Ladislas Starevich/Władysław Starewicz, a very early 1910s stop-motion animator who utilised dead insects

(An uncited comment on Wikipedia alleges that at least one critic believed his films used live, trained insects)

These were all good illustrations of how recycled materials can be used to create characters who are able to carry short films, albeit (at least in these examples) films which do not utilise much in the way of conventional structure and tend towards the surreal.

Following this Barry Leith showed us how to make a skeleton figure out of wire and milliput, 

I then worked on making my quadruped character into a biped as was recommended as being more appropriate for this project

Barry and Carla cut appropriate wire lengths for me based on this drawing, and I then made the skeleton using wire and milliput

For the next session I am to collect items to bring to the workshop and be utilised to realise my character

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In today’s session we had the time to produce another iteration of one of the exercises we’d produced so far. As one of the weaker ones I’d produced and given that it leads towards the mystery box project next term I repeated the change of expression animation. With a little inspiration from a broken mannequin already there, the change was from casual nonchalance to worry and panic. I think the initial walk works well and conveys a good uncaring attitude, and the slow down as the figure notices the body is also dynamic and believable. Similarly the backing out and looking around is probably the strongest bit of the animation and conveys a really nice sense of caution and panic in the character’s actions.

The weaker part is the transition between the two, although there’s a better break and change in dynamism than in the last iteration there’s something about the pacing that doesn’t quite work. I think possibly the solution would be to make the jump into a panicked position faster and maybe following a longer pause. As it is, the slower movement into the pose, perhaps reduces the impact of it meaning it doesn’t act as quite as much of a changing point as it should.

With a little extra time at the end we attempted to produce an animation of a cartwheel just to see how it would turn out. Disregarding the disembodied (yet surprisingly unnerving and believable-moving) torso in the background the actual cartwheel motion turned out way better than expected, given how quickly we produced it (in a couple of minutes or so). I think what works well is the setup created by the lifting of the leg first to prepare for the movement, giving the cartwheel itself a real dynamic feel.

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Tutorial 18th February

Today I had a tutorial with Carla, who I have mostly had through Stop-Motion classes. We discussed how things were progressing, what I might be able to do in the future, and that I feel things are going fairly well now after a rocky first term.

We were not able to review my Recycled Character Walk Cycle, but I discussed how I felt it went, and Carla noted that I may want to look at editing in the future and I noted I would E-Mail the sequence to Carla sometime later.

After doing so Carla E-Mailed me to say “ well done for sticking with the rigging, you're getting a pretty decent movement there. Let me know if you want to look at it in more depth at any point, but I think you've done a very good job for a first walk.”

I was happy with this feedback, and certainly would have been happy to know that would be the ultimate response while I was struggling to rig and light it on Friday!

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Recycled Puppet Animating 14th February 2020

This was the first time I have used the stop motion filming space without supervision or the company of any other students, and it took me while to get the shot set up and ensure it was in focus appropriately

Having successfully set up the puppet on a rig, I did find it challenging to move the puppet consistently with the rig. It did make me realise that I could have benefited from more joined up thinking with my puppet, and made more consideration of how my puppet would move, and need to be balanced.

Still at the end of my allotted I had successfully created a walk sequence, which flows fairly well, although I concede that there is a “skating” effect with the earlier part of the sequence in particular. If I had more time in the room it would have been good to have made further attempts, or perhaps different sequences, with the puppet, but I am please to have successfully filmed a sequence which meets the appropriate requirements

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Introduction to Stop Motion Workshop 7th February

Having found that the milliput feet had set appropriately, over the course of the session, to get it ready for animating I:

. Added a hole and piece of copper (from coper tubing, insides filed down on recommendation, from the Munnings Workshop) to the back of the head for rigging

. Cut and glued in blocks of wood for either side of the hips to ensure the legs and feet were stable for moving (advised by Barry Leith)

The puppet was left in the baseroom, to allow the glue to set. I have booked in a session for animation for the walk cycle on 14th February, as I plan to conduct quite a bit of research and draft my essay for the narratology essay over the earlier part of the reading week

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Introduction to Stop Motion Workshop 31st January

Over the course of this session I refined my recycled puppet by: . Adding rubberbands to the legs to make them match the arms . Using torn/cut balloon material to make up the body

. Adding tinfoil to the hands and tinfoil “patches” to the body and face to hint at a kind of broken down/trash aesthetic . Added a bottlecap to the top of the head to be a kind of hat . Adding milliput feet

Hopefully this should now bring it to be ready, or nearly ready for the walk cycle sequence, once it has been set up for rigging

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Introduction to Stop Motion Workshop 17th January

At this session, with our the Milliput on our model skeletons having dried since the last workshop, we were to work on developing our skeletons with recycled items we either brought to the session or was available for us to use in the base room. To the session I brought: . A can . Leaves . A clip . A roll of raised paper (bought at a charity shop) From the provided I used: . A paper cup . A toy ghost head . Small Rubber bands At the end of the session my model was:

I was originally planning to glue the leaves to the cup to give the body an odd naturalistic texture and look, slightly inspired by the look of the main character from Missing Link (which I have yet to see)

However, I was advised that these would likely not survive the heat of the lights during the filming.

We are to continue to work on the puppet in our own time until the next workshop on 31st January

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Stop Motion Lecture Presentation/Workshop 10th January

In this session we had a very interesting presentation from a Stop Motion animator named Tine Kluth, a stop-motion animator who has worked on a range of shows, including Timmy Time which I have always enjoyed despite being 20 years out of the target audience when it started over a decade ago.

Points Ms Kluth raised included: . Pitching for projects (she noted that on occasion she has not won the pitch, but ultimately animated on the project they went with) . Working Freelance; can sometimes involve no work for a month, and then a lot at once . Shorter projects are more likely to be picked up at Festivals . Holding Stop Motion Puppets to the ground can either be achieved with pins or magnets . How studios sometimes prefer films to be animated with 2 separately taken frames of the same shot, rather than held on for twos

In the second half of the session we worked on a stop motion sequence of two characters getting up off the ground at the same time.

In our group we shot two reference videos; one for each of the characters: For the character on the right

For the left:

The end result:

We had time to add in additional action after the characters had got up. I think it came off fairly well, although the stiffening actions for the character on the left (which I animated for many of the shots) did not come off quite like I wanted and some of the transitions between movements are a little jumpy.

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Intro to Stop Motion Workshop 6th January: Marquette Making

Today we talked about potential designs for our Fantasy Creature, following on from the Castle Visit in December. The plan is to make an armature as an idea for a puppet to design later. The following was noted: . Must be either a biped or quadruped . Adults bipeds are proportioned 6 heads to a body, adolescents are 7 heads to a body . Structure is to be completed before detail is added

 I sketched a character based mainly on the armadillo at the museum, with influence from the pig’s head. 

I also took some inspiration for the poster of the film The Company of Wolves, which popped into my head for some reason.

I began work on the Armature; it did not come naturally to me and I will work further on it later

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Introduction to Stop Motion Workshop 13th December

TBC

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Life Drawing Castle Museum Visit 9th December

In this session we visited the animal displays at the Castle Museum to draw inspiration for our creature designs on the Stop Motion Unit I drew a range of sketches based on what I saw, including some attempts to combine characteristics into something (hopefully) unique

I also took some photos for future reference for particular displays that caught my eyes

The Aardvark and seal particularly caught me eye, as I find their rounded shapes quite appealing for character design

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Introduction to Stop Motion Workshop 6th December

This was our first session with Stop Motion, barring an Induction session in late November, where I and another student produced this brief sequence with armatures

For this I produced two Bouncing Ball sequences, one standard:

I made this sequence go down on 1s to make it quick and impactful and then bounces up on 2s to emphasise the squash and stretch. I think it came out OK although I struggled to keep the shape of the ball while filming.

I then tried to do a sequence of the ball bouncing but struggling to get back up

I did this partly by alternating the frame holds as follows: . Down on 1s . Halting on 6 . Bouncing up on 2s . Hold for 16 . Up and hold on 6 . Down on 2s . Hold for 10 . Up and back on 2s I think this came out OK, although I think more time on the down would cultivate more of the feeling I was going for.

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Our session today for our stop motion induction involved animating an armature to lift a box, the task was designed for us to be able to decide on a weight for the box and apply what we’ve learnt about the principles to make it look and feel that weight. I decided the best way to do this would be to make the box either very light or very heavy to push the movement to extremes. In the end I ran with heavy because I wanted to practise slow and meaningful action, to try and draw out the movements yet still make them believable.

I started with a fairly confident and straight-forward walk towards the box, with my concentration on each stage of the cycle the result is a lot better than the previous tests I carried out in our first week of the induction where the legs never quite straightened and figure walked around almost entirely on his toes. The figure walks at a good pace, going through each position in the cycle, and I think the leaning back adds an air of confidence; originally I was going to make the walk more puffed out and confident but had to alter this as his face was already focused on the box, where otherwise he could have been looking upwards and outwards.

The next bit was the trickiest to get right and consequently I spent a lot of time reshooting and altering the frames I had shot to try and get the feel right. The difficulty I was having was what I’d set out to try and achieve, that being to make the box seem so heavy that he could barely lift it when in reality it was a lightweight block of polystyrene the armature could have easily supported over its head. I spent a long time trying to get the initial jerk upwards to look as if i was causing strain to the armature while not making a difference on the box, in the end I found the key was in changing the posing from a generally bent position to one where each separate section was straight and strained.

The final section where he actually lifts the box was quite enjoyable because it allowed for tiny movements of the model at a time and it was rewarding to see this pay off when viewing it back to see effect this had on how hard it made it look for the armature to lift the box. While doing this I had to balance how slowly the body was moving compared to how quickly the feet had to snap back down as the figure couldn’t hold the weight on one leg and upon viewing it back I wish I’d left longer between each step forwards to really give a sense of how much he was struggling. Or maybe had I had time to continue, do more steps with varying gaps between them, stumbling forwards a few then pausing before continuing; it’s surprising how quickly time passes when focused on the process in the animation studio.

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The above two videos break down the 2017 BBC Christmas advert and show a little about how it was made and the processes involved including the writers, concept art, model-makers, clothing designers, set designers and the actual animators themselves, both stop motion and CG, an interesting look into the making of a stop motion animation. 

The video below is a post-scenes credit in Laika film ‘The Boxtrolls’ where the two comic relief characters contemplate philosophy in what is personally my favourite scene from the film. As they discuss the possibility of higher powers operating them and controlling their actions the camera slowly pans out and the animator moving them comes into shot in a time-lapse of him working, in an almost Brechtian nod to the medium of the film.

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A look at the process behind stop motion animation and the other processes involved at LAIKA studios.