Jordan Moss – Stop motion
Stop motion animation has been around for a long time, almost as long as traditional
film-making. Originally stop motion involved animating objects which included the
animated movement of any "non-drawn" objects such as toys, blocks or any rigid
inanimate object you care to mention. This was quickly followed by cel animaiton.
And then animators experimented with clay animation and puppet animation which is
what you may be familiar with in Wallace and Gromit and so forth.
Some early examples of stop motion films and techniques can be seen in the "The
Humpty Dumpty Circus" (1898) and in "Fun in a Bakery Shop" (1902). In 1907 "The
Haunted Hotel" was a very successful movie with the cinema audience of the time. In
1912 one of the first clay animation movies using stop motion was released to great
critical acclaim. It was called "Modeling Extraordinary" In 1916, the first woman
animator, Helena Smith Dayton, began experimenting with clay stop motion. She
released her first film in 1917, Romeo and Juliet. December of 1916, brought the first
of Willie Hopkin's 54 episodes of "Miracles in Mud" to the big screen.
Some other notable Milestones in stop motion History
Edwin Porter directed "The Teddy Bears," one of the earliest stop-motion animation
films. A short sequence of playing teddy bears, just over a minute in length, takes
over 50 hours to animate.
Willis O'Brien's "The Lost World" included 49 prehistoric animals in stop-motion,
which took a huge step in stop-motion history.
Willis O'Brien directed another film called "Mighty Joe Young", a well-known film in
1945, with the help of Ray Harryhausen, and stop-motion animator. Ray
Harryhausen received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award from the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences for his technological contributions in 1991.
Stop-motion has changed dramatically since the early 20th century. In fact, stopmotion is rarely used anymore, only in children's TV shows do you see such effects,
such as Gumby.
With the development of digital 3D animation, animating a 3D character in a film has
become much easier and faster, which is favored by the industry. 3D animation
allows unreal characters to seem to be alive.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
Stop motion photography
Stop motion is an animation technique used to make a physically manipulated
objects appear to move on their own. The object is moved in small increments
between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when
the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.
Edweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey
The above screenshot is of a stop motion animation developed by Edweard
Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey, they were one of the first pioneers to create
animated stop motion from camera photography, and they were created by taking
pictures at very precise increments of a horse running. Although the film is not of a
manipulated object to give animation to an inanimate object, animation still applies
because it’s the act of giving motion to pictures that have none.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
Armature
An armature is a skeleton or arm used to allow freedom of movement while maintaining a
still pose, using armatures is very effective for stop motion as it enables the animator to
make minute adjustments without effecting the whole character.
Many animations use armatures because it’s very cost effective and can be done in a variety
of ways, one of the main ways is the use of an armature skeleton.
When on a low budget film armatures are sometimes made from wire and foil to ensure its
very cheap to produce many armatures.
Ardman studios (producers of Wallace and Gromit) are famous for using very simplistic
armatures for their first few films.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
ARDMAN Studios (Wallace and Gromit)
Wallace and Gromit was produced in 1989 by a small collective, it used stop motion and
armatures to produce very comedic animations.
The technique’s Ardman studios used in the creation of the ‘Claymation’ were very basic,
the models were fist storyboarded and conceptulised using traditional methods.
Once the characters had a very strong base, they were then created using armatures and
modeling clay.
Hundreds of the primary characters were produced each with slight variations in facial
expression and emotion, this enables the characters to be simply switched rather than
edited. Using this method reduces errors and produces a smoother cut all in all.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
Once I had storyboarded my scene in a few variations I chose my primary concept, I then
purchaced the materials I needed to reproduce the scene I had storyboarded.
I purchased a pack of gummy bears and used a dslr camera mounted upon a jig with a one
point light source in the background.
I began reproducing my animation by studying my storyboard and reproducing the scene
but on the set I had created, taking pictures every time I moved the scene.
The first shot was of the gummy bears falling like rain, they fall and slowly increase pace.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
Once the gummy bears had started to fall like a steady flow of rain I then began the second
part of the scene, where the bears congregate into the center to form a pile.
As the gummy bears clump together more join the pile to create a small collection of them
on top of one another.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
As the gummy bears get closer to one another the packet slowly comes into view, showing
the logo.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
Once the packet is in full view the gummy bears begin snaking around like a worm and reenter the packet.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
The animation ends with the gummy bears completing their journey and the packet coming
into full view to show the logo.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
Once I had all of the raw data from the stop motion shoot I took it to a computer to edit and
compose within after effects.
I opened a new composition within After Effects and set the frame rate to 12 fps as I didn’t
double step the animation (2 photo’s every frame) I wanted the animation to look amateur
as well as stepped to give it a childish look.
I imported the footage as an image sequence so that the animation would collapse itself
from single images to a loop of footage.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
The animation ended the exact length I needed so all I needed to do was get some sound
effects and music to use on the animation.
I got my sounds and music from freesound.org, it’s a site that offers royalty free sounds.
The first sound I used was of paper being drawn on as it sounded like something moving
along a surface.
The second sound effect I used was of the packet being crunched up as the sweets poured
inside it, I placed the sound effect directly as the sweets entered the packet.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
The final thing I added to the animation was a music track, I found a piece of beat boxing
that matched the scene perfectly and added it to the animation.
The final film was then rendered in h264 format allowing it to be played on most computers.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
Evaluation
Thought the project I have learnt many different things such as how armatures work and the
process of creating stop motion films, Previously I only had minor knowledge within the
subject area from exploring it in my free time but having a project set has really helped
develop this understanding much further than before.
While I was creating my film there were a few things that didn’t go as planned, my
storyboarding was too overzealous as I didn’t account for the technical limitations of the
creation, as when working with stop motion you have certain barriers that you should work
towards but not break. For instance, when I was creating my animation my primary choice
storyboard was of a gummy bear character with background scenery flying past amongst
explosions, although this idea seemed great in hindsight it wasn’t the best for stop motion
and the limitations I had such as the stage size and the fact that the camera rig I needed to
use would be mounted looking down at a backdrop vertically rather than horizontally.
Overall I think I have managed to meet my goal of creating a stop motion advert using only
sweets, I do think I could have maybe gone further with my animation technically though.
The animation I ended up with may have been downscaled by myself but that was due to
poor time coordination by myself. The original scope of the animation was a gummy bear
scene from Rambo but that proved too hard to create within the time period I had left it
down to.
When I achieved my goal of the final advert I felt happy to have completed it but exhausted
from the amount of effort that needs to go into the creation of these films, I certainly have a
new found respect for other animators that use this medium. The final film met the target
requirement by advertising the company I had chosen, that being Haribo. I do believe I
could have accomplished the target requirements to a higher grade but I do feel that would
have maybe cut other areas of the project short.
If given the choice to approach the project again the things I would have done differently
would most likely be the storyboarding and time allocation, during my production I felt that
I spent too much time storyboarding and not enough allocated to the actual production of
the stop frame animation, in the end I only ended up with a day to work on my animation
but several to work kinks out of the storyboards. The way I could improve my project in the
future would be to make sure that I stay within the guidelines more often, I usually decide
to either go above and beyond the bounds of the subject but it nearly always ends with me
having not enough time to get the result I wanted.
I am very happy with my final outcome as I do believe it met everything needed to achieve
the specific criteria, but as said before if given the chance to re approach the project I would
most certainly make sure I allocate my time better.
Jordan Moss – Stop motion
Bibliography
http://www.freesound.org/
http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armature_(sculpture)
http://marlenek9771.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk/