Stop Motion Animation Exercises
I took some classes on stop motion animation in college - here are some outputs from that class!
Pixilation - “Snow Day”
This is a quick project done for an "Alternative Frame by Frame" class, which is all about weekly one-off stop motion experiments. It's cool; it's relatively low-pressure.
There are parts I like (I think the "scooping up" of the second boot is smooth, the flourishes the gloves make when they're on are nice, and the timing and speed of going outside is suitably fast) but there are plenty of issues.
There's no smooth line of action she makes as she's on the floor putting on her jacket, and there could've been some more "animation"-y exaggerated acting and emotions. And there's little stuff too; when I cut to outside, it's easy to be distracted by a car in the background. Framing and lighting could've used more work too.
Stop Motion - ““Painting with Cars”
After pixilation - which involves real people that get tired - I wanted to down-shoot on something that would be totally cool with staying in one place for a period of time. So inanimate Matchbox cars were cool, and maybe I just wanted an excuse to play with toy cars.
A couple years ago I made a painting with toy cars as my brush; I had a monster truck with big wheels for big details, smaller sport cars for smaller details; it was pretty fun. But I thought it would look cool in motion, so here we are.
Most toy cars don't have "treads"; the wheels are smooth. I wanted treads to help hold the paint and give texture. Luckily I found a 5-pack of Mountain Adventure cars, all with treads. $5. Sweet. I didn't use two of them, they're now on my coffee table.
So I think there's some exciting movement going on, but I think it's pretty clear that I was just "having fun". I knew cars would chase each other, and it would end in a crash - and wait - and then another crash. Meanwhile the different colored cars would be making lines all over the place, making some sort of abstract Pollock-y art.
I made a mistake with the second crash. I was so focused on making the purple car tumble, I forgot to actually make the yellow car - the other half of the impact - react in any way. So "in post" I made the frame where the impact happens shake a little, which works, but I would still prefer if the animation itself was better.
Also, you can see the paper wobble, which can be a little distracting. But that's one of those mistakes I don't mind having in stop motion; it can be interesting to be reminded of the reality and physicality of stop motion.
Pixilation - “Lightwalking”
The assignment was to make a looping animation using light-painting. I went to Party City, got some glow sticks, and decided I wanted to see how a walk cycle would look... in the dark!
Spooky!
Shout out to my friend Lia for being my actress for this!
I also helped out with this other animation, using lightpainting behind stencils. I'm the right bunny!
Pixilation - “How I Dance”
The assignment here was to "animate to music". I worked with a partner on this one; we booted up GarageBand, whipped some music up, and set out to do a little dance.
The goal was to see how much we could "get away with" because of the music; we were able to do some crazy jumps in action, syncing them to the beat to cover them up. And I think we were pretty successful, all in all! The music and animation are working well together.
In retrospect, the one thing that bothers me is that some actions are "caused" by the drum beat, while some are synced with violin notes. I think it would be smoother overall if I just stuck with the drumbeat.
Also, I think I could've gotten more creative with switching out actors; this movie could've been much funnier!
Time Lapse - “North Carolina Beach”
Spring break just ended! I went down south to North Carolina, which was a nice departure from Rochester. Much in the same way that a warm hug is a nice departure from being stabbed by ice cold knives. Every day, for the majority of the year. Not that, you know, I'm saying anything about Rochester.
Anyway, I spent some time on the beach!
I took 1,922 pictures with my DSLR. This was enough to make a video of about a minute (at 30fps), but I cut that in half to 30 seconds. Because I value your time!
The trick was to find an exposure that could remain constant, a compromise between the exposure for daytime and nighttime. And then, after an initial programming of my camera, I just set it and forget it.
For :00 to :20, I was shooting one photograph every second (therefore compressing about 20 minutes into 20 seconds, speeding it up by 60x). After that, to save space on my camera, I was taking a picture once every 2 seconds, halving the speed to 30x.
Also, there's a jump at around :20. This was when I switched SD cards, which took about 30 seconds, so I missed out on some valuable photographs!