Stop motion is notoriously one of the harder disciplines in filmmaking. Each tiny movement is crucial to the story the filmmaker is conveying, each tiny movement needing to be documented to be shown to the audience.

Along with that comes color scheming, which can have a high effect on the tone of the video. Think of Fantastic Mr. Fox by Wes Anderson, filled with high saturations for the majority of the film to create a positive atmosphere, and darkened hues as the story hits the climatic problem. Wes Anderson is notorious for the color palettes of his films, but the backgrounds being nonchalant with the color to not draw attention away from the main characters.

Another part of Pre-Production is the ideation process. You must give yourself the space to think weirdly! Creating that space allows your brain to relax and be able to think creatively without feeling pressure. At the same time, you should work in a zone where your skillset may need time to develop, but you’re still able to work on the project and do it well. It will be uncomfortable to push yourself, but in the end you’ll learn more from the process.

Drawing Inspiration

Starting at 2:33, this stop motion instructor goes into making expressions for objects that you’re using in your videos. Enlightening because you won’t have to use markers or anything really messy to create the desired effect.

I chose this video because one of my ideas for creating my own stop motion is using Legos. This crash course for Lego stop motion is also a stop motion in itself. It’s a great instructional video because you’re going step-by-step with the teacher as they create the stop motion. The tip about using poster tack is so crucial, and am surpised I didn’t previously know about it. The part about creating emotion in inanimate, and often expressionless, objects was also really useful!

This tutorial by Loft Studios on how they create and animate their cardboard characters is both hilarious and useful. I thought it was interesting that the creator of the videos utilizes a Lego base, and the feet of the characters are additional Lego pieces to hold them upright. Each character has an extremely expressive face, and the body language is very animated. Additional expressive features like a sweat mark remind me of emojis, the creator probably drawing inspiration off of those or anime.

I thought that the Face Value short film was an interesting concept. Both for stop motion – claymation in this case – but also conceptually. Every person you meet on the street could be wearing the same mask as you, and unless you’re there in their lives everyday and seeing what’s under the mask, you have no idea how they’re feeling.

Lost Sheep by Lukas Rooney caught my interest due to the negative space feel that the short film has. Made entirely out of pieces of paper and illuminated from the back, the film depicts a shepard caring for his sheep. Each sound chosen was perfect, the depth created with layering the paper pieces between objects and characters was intentionally done. You can feel the emotion behind every ear flick, each inquisive thought of the sheep’s head, and the thoughfulness of the shepard caring for the sheep. The film envoked such emotion in me that I did cry like a baby, and a very good choice for the many awards that the filmaker won.

Viewing behind the scenes from the making of that short film, it looks like Lukas Rooney uses animation movements in post-production to assist with the quick movements of the birds swooping in.

This one was really inspriring because I wanted to make a video using materials I already had at home. Most of the materials shown are things that everyone has! The transitions between the different types of materials is also really great, using shape and color to help with the transition. Like with the pencil shavings, they made them into the bowtie pasta shape before adding in the actual pasta. The use of color to make the video intriguing to the eye is something that I wished to emilate.

Foil is again a video showing that you can make any stop motion animation out of regular, everyday items. I loved how the filmaker was interacting with the foil person, and how the foil person revolted when told what to do. Viewers can clearly see emotions through body language.

Released in 2008, Western Spaghetti is a short film in which I think we all remember. This video went viral, and was the 2009 Sundance Film Festival Winner, TIME Magazine voted #2 Viral Video of the Year *2008, and Audience Award – Annecy Animation Festival 2009. Each piece of ordinary home objects and tools were transformed into a cooking masterpiece. Even when using brightly colored, inedible objects, viewers can tell what each respective ingredient is.

This last example really illustrates how simple it is to create stop motion animations from everyday items. Sticky Notes can be reused on flat surfaces, and reused again if someone needed to write an additonal note down. My favorite part was when the Sticky Notes transformed from “THE” to “END.”

Pre-Production

Just like every other video you’ve seen me create, there’s always an ideation period. Part of that includes answering what kind of storyline the project should illustrate, what themes and tones, and the creation of a story board at the end.

I’m thinking of going with story #2, I like the nonlinear timeline. We see Figure 1 enter the scene already moving and on a mission. But where did they come from? We never find out with this book ending, because the ending comes right back to Figure 1 in the place where they started the adventure.

Test Run

This test run is to make sure that my camera equipment is ready and prepared for the actual shooting for the project.