Over the course of two lessons, we were set with the task of creating a very short clip in which stop motion animation is used.
As we prepared and created the entire project during lesson time, the only resources we had were what we were given and what we could find around the classroom. We were supplied with play dough and small amounts of plasticine, which we had to use to create a set, props and/or characters. I began to make a very tiny house, with separate windows, doors and a roof. It was very tricky working with play dough and attempting to create such intricate details as it was hard to make it accurate looking. Another difficulty I found was that the play dough wouldn't stick together, so once I had created something I was satisfied with, it would almost immediately fall apart. It took a lot of patience to finish creating the miniature house, which looked like a fantasy building as it was made with extravagant colours as opposed to bland, realistic ones. I realised that it would be hard to animate the house itself, as only the door and windows moved, but it was way too small to create people to live in the house to animate. I realised that the deep yellow base of the house was reminiscent of a block of cheese, and so I thought to create a mouse to live in the house, as a mouse's surface area is small enough to add details - if I were to create a human that suited the size of the house there would be no detail on it at all as it would be too small. The mouse was my favourite thing to make, however it was almost impossible to stick all his small features, including his eyes or ears, together, as they kept falling off due to the texture of the play dough. Once I had created the house and the mouse, we began to think of a plot that could take place involving them. We created a shoe, which was fairly simple to make as it was a lot larger than any of the other props, and a block of cheese.
The animation was of a mouse emerging from behind his house and retrieving a block of cheese from the shoe. It was a very simple concept but we didn't want anything too complex as we appreciated the fact we only had lesson time to create it and stop motion animation takes loads of time and effort.
It took a lot of patience to create the clip - despite it being such a simple idea, as you had to very slowly move the character a tiny amount with each photograph. We filmed at about 24 frames per second, so we took approximately 144 photographs which produced only 6 seconds of footage. It took a whole lesson to film the entire film, so it's clear just how hard it is and how much patience it requires to make a one and a half hour long film using solely stop motion. It made me admire filmmakers who use this method.
It was great fun creating the film, however it is not something I would consider involving in my coursework as although it's very impressive, it's not my preferred style of film. I would consider, however, practicing it some more as it is very enjoyable to do. Moreover, the film we made was quite choppy - it wasn't seamless like professional examples of stop motion in the industry.
This is the final product:
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