Stop Motion

Stop motion or stop-frame is the animation process where an object is filmed frame by frame – where it is moved incrementally, filmed, then moved again and filmed ect. creating an illusion of fluid movement.

The brief this time was similar to pixelation as we were given the same word to base our animation on – attraction. We also had to use found and broken computer and machine parts to build the sets.

We thought of doing a love story this time but it got scraped as we over heard another group planning the same thing. It wasn’t until I mention an old lamp looked like a ray gun, that we had an idea for our animation. That an evil genius build a ray gun, something goes wrong and instead of zapping people it makes people fall in love. After tweaking the idea, we finally came up with a storyboard. Having the evil genus working in his lab and on the ray gun while he says his inner monolog. The ray gun is a shrink ray and he is going to shrink everyone for being taller than him and for bullying him when he was younger, (we are going to have a flash back of when he was bullied), and a close up of him flicking the switch. We are going to have the ray gun hit three time, the 1st on two people on a bench when hit cuddle, 2nd on a man and his dog and 3rd on a big guys who walks in to the lab (while the evil genius is having a tantrum because his ray gun didn’t go as plan) and hug the evil genius.

Building the set took a lot more time and effort than we originally though. Due to the shots that we need we build two sets, one the lab and the other a park, because of this we decided it would be more time efficient to build them both out of cardboard rather than wood. We all took part on building the sets and the props needed though, I took most of the responsibility to make sure it looked right and we had every thing we need. While one of my team members made the models.

We had to keep the models design simple as we had four-five characters and we did’t want them too complex as then we would not have time to film.

Editing the footage after filming was more complex than the previous animations. Some parts had to be taken out, speeded up and slow down, as well as rearranged. We were given some advice for the shots with the evil genius at his ray and the part with the victims, that you down see him look out of the window, so we were suggested to put a circle on the park footage to make the evil genius seem as if he is looking through to outside.
That was done on animate pro/toon boom, as well as the zaps and the hearts shown in the animation.

For the voice effects I did some but we asked Purple again to dot the voice over. WE gave him little instruction other that who the character was and why he was building the ray gun. So must of it was improvised. I’m glad we asked he to do the voice over again as I feel it add some comedy to the animation.