Making the Animatic... Stop Motion Animation Analysis

The second part of my final piece involves animating a stop motion model coming out of paper, examining his body in amazement, seeing a computer, and walking into the computer screen. It seemed to be a simple idea at first, but considering how time consuming it took to even build the model I realised it would take a while to set up and animate the sequence.

I am disappointed that I didn't allow myself enough time to animate it, however I am overall happy with the images taken for the animatic. They demonstrate how the sequence would have panned out, as well as making the animatic look nicer. If I had more time on it I would have thought about the setting slightly more (as well as the lighting), since I wanted it to look natural, but for it to be realistic I would have found a space with a lightbox available. I would also have added in a couple of extra images to demonstrate what movements he would make when he's out of the paper, just before looking at the computer screen.

Animating with the model in these images would have been a challenge. Since I used plasticine, it is known that if you don't take care of it properly then it will break when handled too much, which slowed production down for me since repairing it was difficult. This made me realise that it would have taken a lot longer than I anticipated to create a decent quality animation, and due to other commitments within this module I worked out there wouldn't be enough time to complete it.

However some companies, such as Aardman Animations, prefer the rough look of plasticine in stop motion. One quote I found interesting whilst researching for my dissertation is from Nick Park:

“If we’re going to do it too slick and smooth, we might as well do it in 3D” (Youtube, 2010, Imagine, From...). Which demonstrates that some people love the authenticity of stop motion over the smoothness of 3D models - though you can achieve rough textures in 3D, stop motion creates the texture naturally. Aardman still use advanced armatures and big sets to create their films, but plasticine is their main material to animate with.

In the film industry the latest technology - decent armatures, good quality materials, and big sets - are provided, which I would personally love to have the opportunity to try one day; the more money you put into it, the more you get out of the experience, but you need a team in order to create a successful production with these materials.

Overall I would say if you are going to animate in this technique, make sure you have the funds and production team to back it up; while it definitely has potential to be a beautiful art form, I have not taken advantage of the most advanced techniques used for feature length films.