Stop Motion by manipulating paper pieces
The first exercise under the Stop Motion rotation involved frame by frame animation by manipulating torn up pieces of paper. My main goals for this exercise was to familiarise myself with the Rostrum setup, Dragonframe, and the process of frame-by-frame animation. We used the work of Caroline Leaf as an example as to how we can use loose media such as sand (as seen in the artist’s work) or in our case, small pieces of paper.
The exercise effectively helped me understand how to use the space available in a frame effectively, and how we can feign the illusion of depth by playing around with the sizes of shapes. I was able to effectively create the illusion of objects being closer or farther away from the viewer by the end of this activity.
A concept that stood out to me during this activity was the importance of micro-movements. These movements help make objects in a frame seem “alive” by extremely small movements (often just by touching the shape). I imagine this would be useful in animating backgrounds, where one can give “life” to the background without distracting from the foreground.
I also got to experiment with pacing and timing. Most of the video was animated in twos at 24 frames per second. However, I quickly realised that one could build anticipation towards a big motion or help settle down after a big motion by pausing on a single frame for longer, sometimes using micro-movements. This was useful in animating the end of the video.
Replacement Animation and Drawing
Taking inspiration from Phil Mulloy’s “Great Moments in Film,” the second exercise of this rotation involved using charcoal drawings to animate frame by frame. It was interesting to take familiar movies and rethink their scenes. For the assignment, we chose the well-known “leap of faith” scene from Spider-Man into the Spider-verse.
It was a tedious and interesting process to animate frame-by-frame using charcoal drawings. Each drawing left a “shadow” behind due to the erased lines. At first, I found it difficult to work with a time constraint, as stop-motion animation is a long process, especially with hand-drawn frames. However, the final product had some intriguing lines and a loose sketchy style to it, which I preferred to clean line art. The style was also influenced by the styles of other students in the group, who were also animating frames at the same time. The process helped me realise that it may not always be the best idea to be precious about drawings, and that a more relaxed energy would not only make the process more streamlined, but also make the end result more interesting.
Week 2: A Trip To The Moon (Process)
For the final project, the theme Trip to the Moon immediately reminded me of the conspiracy theories suggesting the Apollo 11 missions were faked. Still, we experimented with more ideas through a mind map; notable mentions include a colony of Elon Musk clones on the moon and a Rocket Man concert on the moon. Finally, we settled on the idea of having a stairway to the actual moon on the set of the fake moon. We also came up with the idea of having a switch on the surface of the moon, which powers the moon’s light. This also helped us achieve a comedic ending at the end of the film.
Initially, we wanted to implement a pair of eyes falling down in the darkness after the lights go out (in a very Looney Tunes-esque manner). However, we decided that it would not be logically possible, because of the astronaut’s helmet. Due to time constraints, we completely omitted the scene. Additionally, we changed the spiral staircase to a normal one, to use the vanishing point as a point of interest on the screen.
I realised that most of the elements in the animation could be animated using paper cutouts. This also meant that most of the scenes captured would be silhouette images with high contrast. One of the more detailed cutouts was of the moon, which was detailed using charcoal. I wanted to include different art styles in a single frame to emphasise the juxtaposition between mixed media in the piece.
I also drew inspiration from Lotte Reniger’s use of flat puppets. I experimented with making my own astronaut puppet, which streamlined the animating process in the end. Movements using the puppet seemed more natural, and were easier to implement.
We shot the film at 24 frames per seconds, shooting in twos. Following some feedback, we paid more attention to pacing and effectively timing events to stress on certain movements. Additionally, we added a zoom into the last movement to emphasise the comedic effect.