Reading & Writing
This weeks reading finds us looking at color and experimentation to bring life to your animated story. Let’s take a moment to breakdown Chapter 5: Color Sense and Chapter 6: Weird Science in Liz Baker’s Animated Storytelling.
Chapter 5: Color Sense
Baker level sets the chapter with a grounding in basic color terminology. Hue, saturation, value, and tone are the foundations for using color in any film but especially in animated stories. Akin to using music to set the feel and mood of a piece, so does color. By incorporating key color choices into your story you can move the story fluidly and get your audience to follow along. What those key colors are depend on what “YOUR” story has to tell and can only be determined by you. This leads into the next topic, which I was surprised to hear about and that is the idea of creating a color script which aligns with the story beats. By taking your beats, creating a physical (or digital) color script you can align it with your story and set the mood. I could see this working hand-in-hand aligning the music in the story (e.g., where to transition from calm music to more intense music). Another interesting point made was to limit your palette so that the focus is on the subject in your story. By limiting your palette to a few color choices you won’t distract your audience.
Chapter 6: Weird Science
This chapter was well…a bit weird even for me. Up to this point you were following some sort of structure, some symphony of storytelling. However, in this chapter we’re told to experiment and “think outside the box” to help release our creative minds. In the chapter the ideas of creating “bad art” for instance frees yourself from the shackles of the color police for instance. Another interesting point made is to avoid getting pigeonholed into being the “go to” person for that one thing, that while you may be good at doing, doesn’t excite you. One example is to challenge yourself to create things outside your normal “expected” creations to help keep your creative juices flowing. This reminds me of something I do every once in a while. As a eLearning Creation Developer, we use Articulate Storyline 360 to create engaging learnings. The company Articulate has a community called eLearning Heroes to help collaborate and encourage creativity based on weekly challenges. The submitted challenges are submitted for the community to gain insight into multiple creative ideas on the same challenge. Another piece I found interesting was the idea of experimenting with transitions and movements. As in Chapter 4: Storyboarding I find yet another common thread and that is being strategic with the use of transitions and movements.
Research to Inform
In order to understand Stop-motion one must view examples. The ones here contain both classic examples and some that have influenced my project.
Claymation Genius
Probably the earliest forms of stop-motion in the TV era would be Gumby & Pokey’s adventures series debuting in 1956. I remember watching these growing up. Not in 1956 mind you, but as a young lad in the 1970’s. By today’s standards they seem crude and very choppy. However, I would venture to guess the frame rate was 10-12 fps and using malleable clay available at the time. There is an interesting read in Stop Motion Magazine on the creator of Gumby Art Clokey.
Christmas Classics
One of my top picks are anything by Rankin/Bass Productions. Although they started in 1964 with bringing the classic story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to life through “Animagic,” my favorite is “The Year Without A Santa Claus.” In particular the Snow Miser/Heat Miser song was particularly interesting because not only did they have the Claymation sing but also dance while singing. The use of transitions was also done well. Looking at the movement and knowing what we’ve learned thus far, I would guess the framerate to be 10-12 fps. This would be similar to the Claymation of the time of “Gumby.” For more about Rankin/Bass Productions there is a great article in Stop Motion Magazine about what was then referred to as “Animagic.” They are not the “Grandfathers” stop-motion, but they certainly were early pioneers of it. Back then to have Claymation that not only move but also had lip synching was a head of it’s time. There were no computers the way we have now.
Commercially Speaking
In this reel we see various uses of stop motion in the advertisement industry. If we “stop” pun intended and look for a moment at television (TV) ads, we probably see more stop-motion use than we realize. This was a good compilation of only a few created in 2020.
CMC (Color, Music, Comedy)
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is an interesting take on stop-motion. In his follow up to 1988’s BeetleJuice which mixed live action with stop-motion and 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas a full stop-motion movie Burton brings us into the world of the dead. What’s interesting is how Burton uses the colors brown and blue throughout the various scenes to draw you into the world. Mixed in is the use of comedy. Like in the scene above where the undead bride is jealous of the living fiancé. Upon talking about it her eye falls out while crying and she says “It’s my eye isn’t it.” Subtle, but effective to lessen the creepiness of the idea of watching an animation about the dead. Finally, the musicality used to set the mood is undeniable.
“Ready…Action!”
This tutorial I came across changed my direction for this project. Instead of creating a Claymation stop motion, I decided to take a simpler approach for this project and use action figures instead. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to do a Claymation but when I have more time to dedicate to the project. Now, back to why I chose this tutorial. One, I liked the approach of using a clear action stand that can be rotoscoped or “erased” out in post. Plus who wouldn’t want to see a character flying through the air. This technique was very interesting and hopefully will prove fruitful.
Create
As mentioned above, I was originally thinking about doing a Claymation stop motion. However, realizing the timing and the amount of extra work required to make the clay figures along with just the stop motion filming, I decided to use my action figures.
Pre-production Ideas
Below are two action figure ideas I had for my stop motion project. Both revolve around Ant-man and Ultraman. The process of writing the pre-production plan and storyboards was definitely a stretch for me. While I’m used to writing, its usually technical in nature and as for the drawings…well let’s just say I’ve seen kindergarteners do better. However, it’s a skill I’m sure I’ll hone as I do more. My test shot follows after the pdfs.
Idea 1: Linear
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Idea 2: Non-linear
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Test Shot
This process has been frustrating for me personally, because I’m attempting to use my DSLR with remote connect.
I was able to setup my lighting and green screen along with a steady table for the characters. While the setup isn’t perfect, I do think it’s pretty close. However, all the stop motion software for Windows does not work well. Either I get no camera live view or the camera stops operating in the middle of the shoot, or I just couldn’t get Cloudfare to “verify I’m human” to get the trial software or buy. I’ve tried 3 software packages; Eclipse Studio Motion Pro, Stop Motion Studio, and DragonFrame. The other point is besides the frame-by-frame shooting, the other tedious part is getting the lighting, camera, and green screen setup but should be worth it in the end.
Like I said above, each software had a quirk. To think this is only the test shoot. What I’ve learned is to be meticulous with your setup. This way, when you go to shoot the actual footage, you’ll be prepared. My test animation is being shot at 12 fps using a Canon EOS Rebel T5, Neewer LED lighting, and Stop Motion Pro’s Eclipse. After export, I pulled it into Premiere Pro added background music and sound effects (Sfx). I chose to leave the green screen for now. I will practice removing that in the action figure project.
