The final result of the claymation shoot is here:

posted by Amanda @ 11:11 AM, ,

I filmed my claymation / stopmotion piece this weekend, and it was so much more difficult than I had imagined. I think that just the sheer number of moving parts and variables made the process complex - even though my setting was simple enough. I think it went alright though, considering that so much of it was new to me. I built wire armatures for each of my characters, and used a non-hardening clay called Claytoons. I built the set from a combination of things like cardboard, transparent wrapping papper and aluminum - doing some coloring with pastels. For lighting I used a Tota light with a reflecting umbrella. I used iStopMotion with a DVC-30 tethered to my laptop. The piece ended up being about 50 seconds long, though it probably took about 15 hours to make - not including work the previous week on the characters. I need to edit out one or two shots that have my hand in them (oops!), but will try to keep as much of the rest as possible.

I'm glad I left as much time for it as I did - this is definitely *not* the kind of work you can rush through. I was exhausted by the end of it.. I had my laptop on the floor because if i put in anywhere else, there was glare off the screen from the lights. So my method was, move the characters, turn and bend down to the floor to press the space bar on my machine. Toward the middle of shooting, i ended up pressing the space bar with my foot. I'm glad I changed - I realized in the end that I had done about 800 lunges! I guess I was caught up in the moment because i didn't realize it at the time but now my legs are paying for it.

If I had to do it over again, here are some things I would do:

Learn to build better (stronger) characters - mine could stand, but couldn't really walk. I might even consider using an art model next time or something more substantial.

Practice with the timing more before the shoot. I think this was the hardest thing - too many clicks on one thing, and not enough on the others. Thus, the timing doesn't make a lot of sense.. some things are very drawn out and others happen too quickly.

Save the experimentation for another time. I did a couple of zooms sort of for the heck of it, and in retrospect I think they are distracting.

Stick with the storyboard. I storyboarded, but then realized that having multiple scenes was too complicated and changed my idea. I should have redrawn boards before I shot. Instead I winged it. It seems that in animation, this is the thing I have had the hardest time with -- but it is also the most important.

Here's one image of the characters on the set.. though this is not the lighting being used in the piece:

posted by Amanda @ 9:54 AM, ,

This week we are working on more stop motion, but this time using puppets/characters instead of real people.

Here are some shots of my main characters:

posted by Amanda @ 12:21 AM, ,

Time lapse / pixillation

This assignment was a little difficult for me - I see, now, why storyboarding is important.

** In compression and upload, the video lost all of the stop motion effects.. this is just a sketch for a record - dv shown in class.