Paper puppets

The aim of this workshop was to create a short stop frame animation using paper puppets in a similar way to Lotte Reiniger. I worked in a group with Su, and we decided to try and make our story more dystopia themed - so it involved a sense of fear. Su created the city background whilst I cut out the paper puppet. I got confused about the perspective of the puppet as I had cut it out to be facing forward, but then realised it should be facing sideways as it can only move left and right. I modified it to make this mistake less obvious. 

Su also created a 'monster' to chase the character. We didn't want it to be too detailed, but still scary and ominous - so we decided to use hands in different colours, so it would just look like a mass of monsters chasing her.

We only had one character to create a feeling of isolation, like she was one of the few survivors in a destroyed city - trying to escape the monsters. She is walking across a bridge, when she hears the monster coming and runs away.

To create the animation we set up a camera on a large tripod on the floor - because it was difficult to get the whole thing in shot otherwise. We lay out the set underneath it, and moved the puppet frame by frame. We had some difficulty figuring how to make the puppet look like she was running properly, because we had to use blu-tac rather that wire or pins, so it doesn't look very smooth in places. The view didn't turn out very well, in that you can clearly see the space around the background - this was mainly because people kept knocking the tripod so that the camera changed position - but we could have zoomed in more and checked that the position was right for each frame. Overall though, I like the mood and story we created, I think it was fairly successful. I like the simplicity of it being flat and only silhouettes. I'm unsure if I will use this technique again, as it was very time consuming, and I found it difficult to make the movements look smooth.

Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger was a German film director in the 1920s - mainly creating films using silhouette animation. In her life she directed nearly 50 films. 

Her technique is to cut out puppets from black paper with scissors - joining together the joints using thin thread or wire, so they can be moved. Backgrounds were created by layering cut out black and white paper to create depth. She would then set up the backgrounds and puppets on top of a lightbox, with a camera positioned above - and take photos of the puppets being moved frame by frame. To transition scenes Reiniger sometimes covered it with shrinking paper shapes, as if the viewer was blinking - this makes it flow smoother. The photographs of each frame is then put together and sped up to create and animation.

I like this type of animation because although it's very flat and dark - the focus is put onto the characters and the story rather than how it looks. There is no sound other than music, so all emotion is shown through the characters. Reiniger puts a lot of detail into the puppets and backgrounds, making it a beautiful piece to look at.

Found object animation

The aim of this group experiment was to create a slightly longer stop animation using random 3D objects.
Here is an example I found on youtube, that uses wires and pebbles.

For this experiment we picked a small number of objects we found around the room - two left feet, an old radio, a pencil sharpener, some paper. We then created a longer animation that had to be at least 20 seconds long. Overall our animation had approx 240 frames, so took several hours to create. We used a camera and tripod for this stop motion, taking photos as we moved the objects slightly - this way it was easier to keep the camera pointed at the same place, as if we had used a phone camera it would have been difficult - then a group member put the frames together on iMovie. We wanted to have things going in and out of objects - out of the radio, into the pencil sharpener - which was difficult to do without showing our hands in the video.

Overall I think our animation was successful and told some kind of story using the objects. We also decided to include one of the objects going into the iPad as one thing and coming out as another, so we used a drawing app on the iPad to draw out the frames of the 'transformation' to act as a transition, I think it worked quite well, although it could have been neater. In some places our hands are visible moving the objects - mainly the feet, as they were quite heavy so difficult to keep balanced without holding the top. Other than that I think it turned out okay. This technique is very effective, as you can 'bring life' to inanimate objects, however to create longer animation would take up a lot of time.

Monty Python

For this task the aim was to create another stop motion animation in groups, using cut-out images from magazines etc. As inspiration, we looked at the work of Monty Python and the way this type of animation is used in it.

The images used in this are quite quirky and random, so we tried to pick out images that didn't make sense together. We looked through magazines and cut out images we thought we could use for the animation - plane, TV, face, eyes. The story didn't need to make sense as it's inspired by Monty Python. Again we used stop motion apps to create a short animation of the images on our phones. 

I think we could have improved it by taking more frames so that it looks smoother when put together, but at the same time I think the jumpyness adds to the randomness of the animation.
I like using this technique, however it is quite limited in what you can do, as it's completely flat and the cutout images can't be manipulated very much.

Chalk board animation

The aim of this session was to create a stop motion animation in groups, using the apps we had found on our phones. It was to be made using chalk on black paper. We were shown this video as inspiration:



Our chalkboard animation
We sketched out ideas and decided on a cloud. The idea is that the sad cloud snows and shrinks, as the falling snow forms another cloud underneath, which then rises up to replace the original cloud - so it's like an endless cycle.

We drew the frames one at a time on black paper - it would have been better if we had a chalkboard, as it made it much harder to erase, and towards the end was very blurry.

We used the stop motion app PicPac on a phone, took a photo of the frame, changed the image slightly, took frame, changed slightly etc, app put approx 100 frames together to form a short animation.

We achieved what we aimed to and got the sequence we had planned. I think we used enough frames to make it look fairly smooth, but it would have been better if we'd used more. However the chalk didn't rub out very well, leaving a noticeable 'ghost' mark behind, so the last part of the animation is difficult to see because of this. I think it would have been better if we could have used a real chalkboard.

I enjoyed this technique because it's simple to do and if done properly it can look really effective like in the video.

Apps for stop motion

There are many apps available for phones and tablets that allow you to use the camera to create short stop motion animations. Some examples I found are:

PicPac, Stop-motion, Motion, stop motion recorder, imovie, my stop action, smoovie



I downloaded the app 'Stop Motion' onto my tablet and used it to create a short animation of my water bottle. You can see it here:
files.parsetfss.com/a03916bc-e45a-4fd4-8a7a-9107d8df4e51/tfss-3a978d1c-8e4a-4944-a7bd-78f6cbd213cf-movie.gif
This was my first attempt so it's not very good, but the app was easy to use.

Types of animation

Flip book: slightly different drawing on each page, flipped quickly to create animation, stare at same location, must be flipped fast enough 

Flash animation: computer animation software, used for TV shows and adverts eg Tom and Jerry
This video shows some simple ways flash animation can be created

Stop motion: move object slightly between frames, take photos of each frame and put together, more frames than timelapse eg Nightmare before Christmas, chicken run, Wallace gromit

- Cut out/paper puppet: 2d puppets, joints using pins/wire/blue tac, move across background, stopmotion. Eg

- Clay: create clay objects, slowly move, stopmotion eg Coraline, corpse bride