I feel in stop motion besides the feature length films and adman there is really not a great deal of good character animation using this method. I aim to use my understanding of the basic principles of animation and my skills in 2d and 3d animation to create a real top quality character animation piece.
I will draw on skills from colleagues and peers and by studying the animation method and pipeline i will hopefully come up with my own working method which will help me become a knowledgeable claymation character animator and therefore a animator who can use many different mediums to create a great character piece.
A Few Examples of Inspirations
These are a few examples i think a great character pieces in claymation, Aardman and the Tim Burton/Henry Selick animations are examples of great animation in a now rare medium in feature film production. Wallace and Gromitt is very popular due to story but i think also i think it is popular because it is a piece of clay coming to life and coriline is just amazingly animated possibly the best animation i have seen in this medium.
I have offered my service to the Projects such as the "smoking elephant"(Russell Pointer) and "The Obsessionist. so i better get to grips with this stop motion thing so I'm gonna do some tests with various objects and see if i can bring them to life. The problem or the real main area of concern is transferring my 2d and 3d animation skills to the stop motion medium hopefully this is going to come naturally by sticking to the principles of animation, this was a situation that worked well from converting my 2d skills into maya and now i feel i am a skilled animator in both mediums.
Adding more strings to my bow in terms of character animation has always been a area i have wanted to improve on. I know what i want to do and that is character animation and animation but i don't want to be limited in the different styles they animation can be created.
Ok so i have been reading stop motion books and articles on the best way to work and it just occurred to me that there is so many different ways it can be done and then what was so clear to me is that it is just trial and error and that everyone is gonna have a different way of doing things.
So i put the book down and just started some tests
Fun but Timing is of the essence.!!!
ok so overall it was fun and i feel as though i did a good job but i feel where there is great assets to animating an actual object like with a good armature it is easier to get that weight right but on the other hand timing i find is harder to gauge and the overlapping action is less defined i aim to concentrate on these areas and hopefully work out a way of gauging the timing.
I did another test here which is the armature character sitting down then lying down in a tired manner to gauge the timing of this action i decided to work out the timing by working a few frames ahead in a way. I would do the main two frames of the movement (start of Motion and end of motion) then i would then go back and slot the in-betweens in similar as what do within maya or 2d the difference with claymation is i could only really go at most 5 frames ahead due to consistency of the model. I found this really helped and made it easier to understand logically.
ok so for the projects i will be working for the short films i will be animating an elephant and maybe a monkey. i came up with the character designs for both the elephant and the monkey and thought i would make them out of clay to later do some test with so here is the monkey i made.
Ok so russell pointer made an armature for the elephant and he gave it straight to me so i could test it out as i would be doing a run cycle at some point of the animation.
Russell's armature was very good and i had a lot of freedom in movement but still had realistic skeleton movements.
During this project i have come up against different issues which are different from 2d and 3d animation and could be a problem when i animate the stop motion characters.Another issue i found is that in 2d and 3d animation there is a huge advantage of being able to use squash and stretch to exaggerate movements or to emphasise emotion. In stop motion this is not possible to an extent unless you make a new character each time you make an exaggerated movement which is just not so productive. So i need to use the character in a different and more expressive manner and convey that emotion with limited movements and facial expressions.
For example a 2d animation test like this from richard williams -Animation survival guide is not really possible in stop motion so i need to add stop motion limitations to it.
So I am going to show how i would go about it using a stop motion character but hopefully convey the same emotion.I will use the monkey character i previously showed you for this test.
Here is what i quickly sketched out for key poses.
and here is a quick test using the monkey
As you can see this is not amazing but with exaggerating some of his features like the eyebrows and his eyes you can still get the same emotion i feel put a little more work into this and it would have a similar effect.
Ok so today was the day of the test shoot for the smoking elephant and these are the shots we tested on
This is the animatic for the shots i will be animating.Animatic done by russell pointer
I filmed myself for reference for the first shot peeking round a tree.
This was the very limited facilities we had but we made the most out of what we got and it want relatively well.
and this is me animating it using a box as reference to where the tree would be composited on to it.
and this is the final animated shot
There was a few issues with inconsistency with the clay and problems with the top heavy nature of the elephant so it was hard to manoeuvre his head around box but i found a way of weighting the head down a little. In terms of animation the timing works good i added the part where his trunk acts as though it is looking and sensing danger because i felt that had the potential be funny and i think i got the timing right.
I feel the fact i have a physical is a big help with timing and its a lot more enjoyable than just clicking a button numerous times.
overall I'm pretty happy with the outcome with the shot especially after the problems i came across trying to do it.
Here is a partly composited TEST version with trees
So i went then onto shot 004 of the test shoot where the elephant is supposed to run into shot and stop quickly and look around suspiciously. Again there were a few problems with this shot as its a difficult shot to animate in terms of timing.Also mid shot our camera malfunctioned so i ad to try and get it into the same position again which was very difficult so there is a difference in shot at the end of the shot but its not terrible.
I feel again that the timing of the animation again is really good and i hope the fact I'm doing this will help with all aspects of my animation timing regardless to what medium it is. I feel the ears reacting with the head turn was a nice touch and added a lot of character to the elephant.
These were the two shot done for the test shoot i was due to do also a walk cycle but russell had an issue with the replacement elephant model which we needed it to be made from a much sturdier latex mould with an armature inside.
Overall i am really happy with my first real go at proper Stop motion character animation i feel my timing is much improved from my CGI work. Most importantly though i have really enjoyed this medium of animation and feel as though i have a lot of talent within this medium so i will be continuing working in this medium in the future.Also i have broadened my animation repertoire to 2d animation,3d animation and Stop motion so i feel as though i have so many tools now to create many pieces of different styles of work not a skill that everyone can boast.
