Planning for Stop Motion Animation
Reading
When preparing to create a film, it's important to step out of your comfort zone and put all aspects of the film into consideration. In chapters five and six of "Animated Storytelling" by Liz Blazer, the use of colors and "weird science" is emphasized. Tapping into your most creative state and not being afraid of what others think is crucial when creating your best work.
Colors are a great way to apply creativity into a film. Colors represent meaning and a story, and can also evoke emotions in viewers that they may not expect. The use of colors always fascinated me whether it be in film, art, fashion, beauty and marketing. I conducted intensive research on logos in advertising and how color plays a key role in influencing spending habits.
In Blazer's book, she explains how color influences how a viewer watches a film. The use of hues (common color names in a spectrum such as red, blue, green, blue-green, etc.), saturation (the intensity or purity of a color), value (the relative lightness or darkness of a color) and tone (the reflection of brightness and darkness of an entire scene or shot, regardless of colors used) all play a role in how a picture is viewed. When it comes to film and animation, it's important to keep a simple color palette that's easy to follow. Unlike a painting or drawing, a film moves and therefore needs a simple color palette to avoid confusion on the eye. If too many colors are used, viewers will get lost in what to look at. It's important to use hues, saturation, value and tone to emphasize certain subjects and keep the background as a background.
When planning a color script, it's a good idea to start with one color that matches the overall theme and tone of the story, and then gradually build the rest of the palette. To build a pre-color script, you create a storyboard of rectangular color bars that match the most essential story beats. When doing this, Blazer says the emotions a certain color can make viewers feel is important to consider when creating the palette. Choosing colors for your foreground and background and using saturation is also important to help the viewers focus on the star of the setting.
Blazer also mentions that creating and finding your own weird science is what will bring out your best product. Not being afraid to experiment and grab ideas from inspiration will allow for a more creative piece. She even recommends creating "bad" art, meaning break rules and not worry about what others think, just create. Getting out of your comfort zone and trying new techniques allows a creative to grow. Good areas to experiment in a film are techniques, design, movement, transitions, sources and sound. Overall, when creating a film it's crucial to get out of your comfort zone and always try new experiments to create a product that's better than you envisioned.
Research
Before preparing ideas for my own stop motion animations, I kept in mind Blazer's tips as well as conducted research for inspiration. Below are five strong examples of stop motion animation that helped my creative juices flow.
"Candy" — Pilot Light
My first pick is "Candy" by Pilot Light. This stop motion animation is a perfect example of how to take a simple object and give it meaning through a story people want to engage in. The choice of music and sound effects added a whole extra layer to the story, making it more relatable. If a stop motion can make one feel emotional over an M&M, it just goes to show how powerful of a production tool it is!
"Negative Space" — Tiny Inventions
This Oscar-nominated example is a powerful and impactful animation with a deeper meaning everyone can relate to. The visuals are also very impressive. In order to achieve this seamless animation, there had to have been a bunch of hand made models of the characters as well as lights with different color settings. When objects, such as clothing, would move in the air (especially during the underwater scene), I want to guess fishing wire was used to move these objects and hold them in place for each shot. The one scene where the dad and son text, I believe was either shot through a moving set that moved 360º or a dolly camera. The script was also powerful and added emotion to the piece. Overall, this was a highly produced stop motion animation that tok a large team of people to bring it to life.
"Foil" — Jacob Varley
This is a really creative and funny example of a stop motion animation. The fact this created with tin foil and paper really inspired me. The use of sound effects of the tin foil crackling as the figurines makes this animation more convincing. As simple as it looks, I can't imagine the amount of time it took to perfect the positions of the foils, especially when they were holding pens. Overall, this is a really fun and creative piece that definitely helped me gain ideas for my own stop animation.
"Homemade Starbucks Breakfast Sandwiches" — Magnet Cooking
The idea of using multiple objects to help tell the story and having them change from one object to another also helped me with my creativity. This piece I think is a great example of how clean a stop animation can look when edited properly with precise measurements in the placement of objects. Once again, I can't imagine the amount of time it took to create a project like this. However, the use of having objects change from one to another to assist in the storytelling also inspired me.
"More Stop Motions Ideas" — Brainstorm Productions
Lastly, this example helped me think of what objects I can use in my own stop motion animation. This video has a lot of creative and fun transitions that bring simple items to life. Even though this video has less of a storyline, it definitely helped me think of the materials I can use and how I can give them a deeper meaning.
Create!
To create my story ideas, I filled out pre-production templates and drew storyboards to brainstorm my ideas and bring them to life.
Story Idea #1 — Fish PSA
My first idea is a non-linear, puzzle storyline where a fish is swimming along in the ocean, eating food, then all of a sudden turns upside down and dies. The final shot is a zoom out of the dead fish in the ocean surrounded by plastic items. This story idea would be a little more intricate as I'd use Play-Dough models for my fish and props and also have colored paper as my ocean background.
While drawing my storyboards, I kept Blazer's color tips in mind and thought of how the colors would play a role in the story. I decided to foods the fish eats will go from green, to yellow, then red to signify "go, slow down and stop," as the fish is headed toward its death. The color of the ocean will also turn from a pretty blue to brown, representing pollution. This story will focus more on color and the placement of props.
Story Idea #2 — Cola Campaign
My second story idea is a linear story ad campaign. This will be about a soda company who is looking to put its profits into clean water for countries in need. The campaign will be called "sips for smiles." Text will be shown on the screen to give it a commercial-like feel. The visuals will be a an empty glass being filled with ice, cola being poured in the glass, a straw being placed, then finally the glass being picked up and cut to a CU of the drink being sipped and end with a smile. This story will be easier to execute as it will allow for more flexibility in shots and creativity.
Demo Stop Animation
In order to familiarize myself in actually creating a stop motion animation, I created a short little stop motion to get used to taking photos and editing. As I was taking photos, I realized how tricky lighting and handling the camera can be to make sure the animation looks as realistic and smooth as possible. While editing, I also realized how many photos are needed to create a smoother animation. Using the speed duration feature in Premiere Pro also helped bring my animation to life, but for my storytelling project I will definitely take more photos to enhance the quality.
Here is a demo of my first stop motion animation!