What is stop motion?
Stop motion animation is the use of photographing and manipulation of objects in a sequence to give the appearance of the objects moving as each frame is moved in a sequence. This film making technique can make any object move however puppets with moveable joints or plasticine figures are most commonly used. Stop motion animation is different to 2D animation as stop motion uses physical objects instead of drawings and are usually photographed, then slightly moved again. Stop motion is a fun & engaging method in film making and this type of animation technique is used in media such as:
- Television shows
- Feature films
- Commercial use
- Films
- Music videos
There is a certain kind of magic to stop motion. As advanced as CGI is, it lacks the charm compared to the stop motions time consuming hand crafted movements. It gives the illusion that we are peering into another world which many people find fascinating.
Here is our final piece for our photograph stop motion animation. In this task we had to work in groups of 3 with Chris & Adam to produce a quick video by carefully animating frame by frame of an art mannequin. Before we started the task we had been put into random groups of 3 by Robert then we looked at a video of a stop motion mannequin dance to give us an idea of what we are supposed to do. We decided to go with a concept where the mannequin is a ballerina preforming a dance with an audience making a round of applause at the end. We firstly began the process by Adam researching images/videos & poses to understand how an actual ballerina would move and preform. Then we started photographing the mannequin doing twirls and other dance moves. I then thought of the idea of giving a round of applause towards the end of the video by adding a secondary mannequin which are a couple of large mannequin hands.
Chris & Adam thought of the idea of customising the mannequin to give it more personality by giving it a smiley face & a hat. I photographed most of the images of the dance then Chris took all the images on his iPhone then uploaded them onto google Drive. We then picked out some classical music to go with our animation piece from YouTube then Chris chosen an appropriate background the set the theme of the stop motion, we achieved this by adding a greenscreen first in the background when taking the pictures so it could be possible to create a new background for our mini project. The background had changed into a brick wall background.
We did this task to prepare us to our final piece of stop motion for our energy drink by letting us think outside the box by animating a still mannequin coming to life but also finding a concept for it so its unique.
References:
Team, N.F.I. (2022). Stop Motion Animation – Everything you need to know. [online] NFI. Available at: https://www.nfi.edu/stop-motion-animation [Accessed 23 Mar. 2023].
Tucker, E. (2020). Why do we still love stop motion? [online] Creative Review. Available at: https://www.creativereview.co.uk/why-do-we-still-love-stop-motion/. [Accessed 23 Mar. 2023].