Lighting and Setting

Production Preparation:

-Areas must be clean (clay picks up anything)
- Clean Hands (Must be cleaned before handling other colours)
- Petroleum JElly (handing to have to prevent sticking)
- Use 3 point lighting

Character sizes on average are about 8-10 inches (20-25cm)
Realism in stop-motion - 'Go Motion' objects are moved slightly in front of an open camera.

Materials:

-Newplast Plastacine
-Hardening Clay (Fimo) for joints or eyeballs
-Wire for armatures
- Texturing tool

Fact: Polymer clays are applied over armatures that has been wrapped with crinkled tinfoil. When ready the clay figure is baked in an oven, e.g. Fimo 265F (130C) for 30mins. Temps over 350F (175c), if burns off hydrogen gas and produces smell.

Stop-Motion Animation

GOLDEN RULE: "Nothing should move unless you want it to." Quote from Aardman.

Reference Book: The Animation Bible by Maureen Furniss.

- Figures must be immobile during shoot, but also easily freed.
- The set must be tied down i.e. Wire through the figures foot magnet.

These are the video clips I have been looking at that provide good examples of stop-motion animation:



The California Raisins, animated by Will Vinton Studio, were a big hit and helped popularized the term Claymation.



These small geometric forms require no need for support since they do a lot of sliding and rolling.

Aims and Learning Outcomes

Aim:

I would like to create a short claymation where I can explore many of the techniques used for stop-motion animation. I would like the animation to have no dialogue mainly focusing on actions and expressions and to use simple effects but in particular develop acting in animation to create believable characters. I would like the animation to mainly be aimed at children but with a dark undertone for a more adult audience.

Learning Outcomes:

-I would like to develop skills for simple techniques of simple claymation and simple animation.
-I would like to have learnt the skills of model making that would allow the models to animate dynamically.
- I would have liked to gained some skills for special effects: - Pouring tea
- Beads of sweat
- Bubbles

Conclusion

Before starting my next project I needed to analysis my previous project and draw out the main parts that went wrong and the bits that worked out to prevent making the same mistakes and improving what did go right. The major problem that took up the most time and caused the project to be rushed till the dead line was the amount of time it took to come up with an idea for my project and this lead to a disorganized schedule. I did however benefit in the research direction I took and learnt a lot from them.

Cornelia Parker - She analysised herself, what she was like, what she cannot not do and from that took away things to reveal to herself what she is able to do and worked from there. Can i reflect myself in my work? I needed to design a project on what I already know and work my way up to a goal, i.e. like a pyramid.