Stop Motion Workshop
This is an one week Stop Motion workshop with Julien Vallee from Montreal, Canada. We were being introduced this animation technique into our Experience Prototyping course, in order to learn visualizing design concepts in a fast and non-tech method.
Using stop motion need time and man power, but it is easy to work with and the whole team is involved, without frustrated by software issues, and it gives a sense of nature and real.
Aparecium
The story is the dolls have been forced to work for the magician day and night, finally they fight back and defeat him.
Me, Maggie and Amid were working together. The idea is using distance effect to scale a human being to a doll size, we used 8 fps, and totally, we took 405 pictures. We planned it on Tuesday night and finished it on Wednesday.
Growing
The idea is using markers drawing leaves and branches to make it looks like growing. We spent 3 hours on it.
Collapse
The idea is to simulate a building falling down into the ground and splash tons of dust. It was painful to move every piece of clays for every pictures.
Kick
The story is the red ball try to beat the boss and cross the stage. This is my own work for practicing basic easy in and easy out effect. I also played with light to make an explosion effect.
Behind the scene
The key points to using stop motion are calculating frame rates and move objects slowly. Before start taking pictures, we need to do a lots preparing works such as planning the sence, light and props, marking the postions of camera, tables, chairs in case of being moved. Sketching a storyboard is such a useful tool to communicate with group mates to really go deep into every key frame, which is just save so much time and troubles.
Technical process
Pictures by Nikon D40 with Dragon Stop Motion
Edited in After Effects CS4
Music 'growing' by Casio PX 200 with GarageBand
2009
