Altered States - Stop Motion Workshop

On Monday, we had a workshop exploring stop motion animation.

Given that I wasn't sure what to expect from this workshop, I figured it wouldn't do me any harm to explore the possibilities of stop motion before the day. With the theme of Altered States and the simple to use medium of plasticine in mind, I sketched a very simple storyboard. It shows a couple of balls of plasticine rolling into frame, changing into simple shapes and later morphing into fish that swim in a circle. This animation would 'alter the state' of the plasticine.

I prefer a clear over clean approach to storyboarding, so there's no shading or anything fancy.

Above: The storyboard I sketched before the workshop

I ended up not using this storyboard due to not being able to access the correct setup on the day, but it was a good exercise nonetheless.

There weren't many cameras or spaces within the studio to create animations with, so I was unable to create my own, but I was more than happy to assist my peers with their ideas, especially given that I would learn about others' methods and from their experience.

Later in the day, I worked within a group (Myself, Arren, Emily, Luke and George) to create a Top-Down stop motion animation using Dragonframe. Dragonframe allows for a live view from a connected camera, like the one on the cieling that we used, as well as onion-skinning. Due to these features, it was very easy to see exactly how far we could push each of our frames.

For our animation, we decided that it would be fun to use two coats as our charcaters, given that we could push their movements further than a human's. As for what they would do, we decided to have them fight each other.

While we were working, the green fabric that we were using as a background slowly shifted downwards without us realising, and our feet ended up in the frame quite a bit. However, I have made the choice to leave these visible rather than editing the piece for a couple of reasons.

One of these reasons is for the sake of learning. If I were to edit the piece so that you could not see the slow shift down or feet in frame, I might forget that it happened when looking back and repeat the mistake. I would much rather prevent or fix this problem during the animating stage, instead of afterwards when it may look odd or obvious. Next time, I would ensure that the fabric was either weighed down or taped to the floor to stop it from moving, and ask everyone to step back just before the pictures are taken.

The other reason for leaving them in is actually a choice based on aesthetic. I feel that stop motion such as this has its own type of charm, and being able to see evidence of the people working on it adds to that charm in my opinion.

Above: The animation made using Dragonframe (Credits to Zoe, Arren, Emily, Luke and George)

During the workshop, I kept the 12 Principles of Animation in mind. I also saw examples of these principles within the animations I helped with.

These 12 principles are:

Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Straight Ahead/Pose to Pose, Follow Through & Overlapping Action, Slow In & Slow Out, Arcs, Secondary Action, Timing, Exaggeration, Solid Drawing, Appeal.

The main principles I saw examples of while helping others and used myself were Anticipation (Preparing for an action, like crouching to build up energy before jumping), Staging (directing the viewers attention around the screen), Straight Ahead (Taking it one frame at a time), Follow Through (Parts of a body continuing to move even after the body stops), Timing (How many frames between main actions), Exaggeration (Exaggerating actions to add more realism or to make them more extreme) and Appeal (Characters that are nice to look at through dynamic designs).

The video below is where I learnt about all of these principles.

Overall, I did enjoy this workshop, as I have always wanted to try my hand at stop motion on a larger scale. If I were to do this again, I would definitely want more of a chance to prepare.