Stop Motion Animation Evaluation

In this evaluation I am going to talk about my stop motion animation project and how I have worked with it.

Before starting the project together with my classmates, we did an experiment of what we could do, our idea was to pretend to make the game of Tetris on the whiteboard and take photo by photo as the pieces move down, as the real game. We find it difficult, and very simple, so we decided to look for another idea for the main project.

My classmates shared the ideas with other people, so I decided to work alone.

Since I start with this project, I have analysed the different types that stop motion animation has, by reading and watching videos, which this inspired me to create a story in 2D drawing with 3D places. My first idea for the main project was similar to the real idea, but the story was very complicate since it was very long, so I discussed this with the teacher and she help me to take a better idea about the story, but at the same time I was not sure about the final of the story.

The story was about an adventurous boy, who wants to travel around world to different countries. I chose to focus on the most visited countries in the world as it could capture the attention of the audience. After this the first thing that I search the landmarks of the countries, also the typical things and the culture of the each countries to make the background. Such I am not good in drawings I start to look how I could draw the character. My purpose was to show a happy and simple guy, because I wanted to prove that the character was an adventurous guy. Finally for my planning I had to decide which music I could use to give more meaning to the project. So I decided to use music that represent each country.

When I had everything prepared, I looked for a properly location and started to make the scenario, where I used a small table, a black paper to cover the table and a black curtain as background. And then as I move the character I put the different landmarks of each country.

In the process of taking pictures I realized that the character and the camera had to be in the same line, so I decided to draw a line in the black paper for the character and on the floor I put a tape to move the tripod and the camera on the same line so this would be useful as a guide. By using the stop motion animation technique this gave a smooth movement to the objects and I used the zoom at the start of the video so this gave a smooth introduction to the video.

I chose to use the redhead light for this project but for safety reasons as these lights could burn the work material I had to change it for photograph lights and this gave a white tone to the image. Sometimes I had issue with the tripod as it didn´t have the plate and this was an obstacle for me so I couldn’t take pictures. Another obstacle that I had was that I had to share the equipment with my classmates so this took me away of working. The camera was working properly so this was an advantage however I had to deal sometimes with the focus as it didn’t respond properly.

During the process of taking pictures as I said before I didn’t have a clear ending for the story so at the same time I had to work with the story and taking the picture as well. And suddenly while I worked I saw the flag of France and quickly I thought in Paris, Paris is the city of love, well that’s what everyone say, and I said to myself I should make an end in which the boy meets a girl, and he fall in love at first sight, thanks to that he stops to travel and ends with her walking together.

For the post-production stage I used the software iMovie. I did research for the music so I decided to use the hymns of each country that could help to identify and represent each country and their culture. For the introduction I put a song that will adapt to the role of the character, since he is adventurous. And at the end when he meets the girl, a romantic song. One of the disadvantages in this stage was the sync of the music with the pace of the story.

In my opinion it was a challenge to work in it, as it was a new and difficult experience as I had to learn and apply the technique properly and at the same time I didn’t have a partner to work with. I learned how time consuming this can be and to move it frame per frame so this can give a better movement. Overall I believe that if I could change or add something will be to add more about the culture and typical things of each country and make the story longer.

My personal strength was that I was organised with the equipment, by following the rules of safety, beside that I gave back the equipment in order and put everything in it respective position.