Make a Stop Motion Animation

I finished my stop motion. In the end it was pretty much completely different from what I imagined, and at the moment it feels like 2 minutes 50 seconds of doing it wrong. But I’m taking a stop motion class at SVA now (under the tutelage of mononamed singer, Voltaire) and I’m pretty sure anything I do from this point on will be 200% better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugCvo4zQHPI

I started filming on Tuesday. I have about 22 seconds so far. I need 2 minutes and 47 seconds for the project… I feel good about it though.

I made this animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=607eD07IHoU

It took a few hours and I learned a lot. I managed to keep the light levels and focus the same, but my tripod was jiggly, so I just bought a remote trigger so I don’t have to touch the camera, and the background will stay PERFECTLY STILL. Rad! =)

Here’s the wire armature (and aluminum innards) of my puppet. In the background is Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” It’s for research, clearly.

This is my senior project for school. I’ve begun storyboarding it.

I’ve purchased my regular dollmaking equipment (sculpey, acrylics, mohair, etc.) and then I went to the hardware store to buy some strong wire, some thinner wire, and some needlenose pliars. I might fit foam into the joints to make them a little more seamless, but I don’t know how well they’ll handle acrylic paints or sculpey glaze.

I’ve invited a few friends over to have them make dolls with me, so this is going to be a fun day.

Last year I made the latest of what I’m starting to call speed animations.

The objective is that the whole project has to be made in a day. I find this very motivating as you get a result very quickly. The trick is to keep the idea simple and short, you probably only want to have one or two simple sets and your characters need to have limited movement. For example an octopus in a spagetti factory would probably not make for a good speed animation. The results are obviously not perfect but I think that adds to the charm of it.

“Little Piggie” is the last years speed animation also see “Little Man, Big Cigar” and “Beer” which would fit into that category. Although Ratobat was filmed in a day, a lot of post production was done so the project actually took sometime.

http://www.aceanim.com/Stopmotion/Stopmotion.html
or
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FleaCircusDirector

I’ve decided to make a music video of this song (Mors Syphilitica’s version,) using stop-motion animation and what little skill I have in crafting sculpey dolls. Wish me luck, this is a massive endeavour.

This was so worth the time

Me and my friend kit made a claymation video for Hansel and Gretel in TV Arts last year.