Unit 59 Stop Motion Animation

Stop Motion Animation
  Stop Motion Animation (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object or persona appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of re positioning. Not all stop motion requires figures or models, many films involve humans or household appliances.


Aardman Animations

Founded: 1972 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton.

Aardman Animations also known as Aardman Studios, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom. The studio is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particulary those feating plasticine characters. Aardman was founded in 1972 as a low budget project by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who wanted to realise their dream of producing an animated motion picture. Nick Park later joined Aardman in 1985. They created the title sequence for The Great Egg Race and supplied animation for the multiple award winning music video of Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer". They also produced the music video for the song "My Baby Just Cares For Me" by Nina Simone in 1987.

Morph: Magic Boots

Wallace and Gromit

"Wallace and Gromit is a British stop motion comedy animation series created by Nick Park of Aardman Animations. The series consists of four short films and a feature length film. The series centres on Wallace, an absent minded inventor and cheese enthusiast, along with his companion Gromit, a silent yet intelligent anthropomorphic dog. Wallace was first voiced by veteran actor Peter Sallis, but this role has been handed down to Ben Whitehead as of 2011. Gromit has no mouth and remains quiet, communicating only through means of facial expressions and body language."



Chicken Run

"Chicken Run is a 2000 British stop motion animated comedy film made by Aardman Animations studios and directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park. it was the first feature length film by Aardman and the first produced in partnership with DreamWorks, which co-financed and distributed the film. The film features the voices of Julia Sawalha, Mel Gibson, Timothy Spall, Phil Daniels, Tony Haygarth and Miranda Richardson. The plot centres on a band of chickens who see a smooth talking Rhode Island Red named Rocky as their only hope to escape from certain death when the owners of their farm decide to move from selling eggs to selling chicken pot pies."


My Opinion

Being someone that has grown up watching Aardman creations such as Chicken Run, Flushed Away, Shaun the Sheep and many more, I love Aardman Animations as a company and can't name one piece of their work that I don't enjoy. It's so interesting and fascinating to see just how much time and effort goes into each short film or feature length film, I really enjoy each and every one of them.



Tim Burton

Timothy Walter "Tim" Burton is an American film director, producer, artist, writer and animator. He is known for his dark, gothic and quirky horror and fantasy films such as the horror comedy fantasy "Beetlejuice" (1988), the romantic dark fantasy "Edward Scissorhands" (1990), the musical fantasy thriller "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993) and many many more. Burton's most successful film to date is the fantasy film "Alice in Wonderland" (2010) which garnered a worldwide gross of over $1billion worldwide. Burton has worked repeatedly with Johnny Depp, who has become a close friend of his since their first film together. Actress Helena Bonham Carter, Burton's former partner has also appeared in many of his films. 

The Nightmare Before Christmas

"The Nightmare Before Christmas (often promoted as "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas") is a 1993 American stop motion musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from Halloween Town who opens a portal to Christmas Town and decides to celebrate the holiday, with some dastardly and comical consequences. Danny Elfman wrote the film score and provided the singing voice of Jack, as well as other minor characters."

Corpse Bride

"Corpse Bride is a 2005 British-American stop motion animated fantasy film directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton. The plot is set in a fictional Victorian era village in Europe. Johnny Depp led a cast as the voice of Victor, while Helena Bonham Carter voiced Emily, the title character. Corpse Bride is the third stop motion feature film produced by Burton and the first directed by him. This is also the first stop motion feature from Burton that was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was dedicated to Joe Ranft who died during production."


James and the Giant Peach

"James and the Giant Peach is a 1996 British-American musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick, based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. It was produced by Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi and starred Paul Terry as James. The film is a combination of live action and stop motion animation. Co-stars Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margolyes played Jame's aunts in the live action segments, and Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, Jane Leeves and David Thewlis voiced his insect friends in the animation sequences."

My Opinion

Tim Burton is one of my favourite animators/producers, I have grown up watching a lot of his films, both animated and live action, and I love all of them. I find a lot of stop motion films boring, but there's something about Tim Burton's fantasy films that is both exciting and fascinating. He's so creative in his work and I love the big head/bold eyes and small skinny body stamp he has. I love that he can entertain people of all ages and not just one fixed age group.

Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer

"Sledgehammer" spawned a widely popular and influential music video commissioned by Tessa Watts at Virgin Records, directed by Stephen R. Johnson and produced by Adam Whittaker. Aardman Animations and the Brothers Quay provided claymation, pixilation and stop motion animation that gave life to images in the song. The video ended with a large group of extras jerkily rotating around Gabriel, among them his own daughters Anna and Melanie, the animators themselves and Stephen Johnson's girlfriend. Also included were six women who posed as the back up singers of the song. Gabriel lay under a sheet of glass for 16 hours while filming the video one frame at a time.The Sledgehammer video won nine MTV Video Music Awards in 1987, the most awards a single video has won. It ranked at number four on MTV's 100 Greatest Videos Ever Made (1999). MTV later announced that "Sledgehammer" is the most played music video in the history of the channel."

Nina Simone: My Baby Cares Just For Me

"In 1987 a claymation music video was produced by Aardman Animations and directed by Peter Lord. The video shows a cat entering a music club and watches Simone (who is portrayed as a cat). The cat is then thrown out of the club by a bouncer but it is able to get back into the club by climbing and falling through the roof and lands into Simone's arms."

My Own Research

"Magic Water"

This stop animation film uses clay animation. I like this film because it's very creative and you can see the person that created the film had put a lot of time and thought into it. 

"Animated in Bed"

I really love everything about this stop motion animation music video. I think the film is really unique but also very clever in  how they have created it. 

Group Stop Motion Animation

Above is a group stop motion animation video, it contains approximately 169 images compiled.


My Stop Motion Animation Film Ideas/Planning

For my first stop motion film, I decided that I would use Russian dolls to create a 10 second clip that shows movement. Below is a mind map I made before I started my shoot. 

Below is a photo of the setup, I used a tripod for this shoot so that my camera didn't move and I had the exact same frame in every picture.

How I Created My Stop Motion Animation Video

For my stop motion animation video I chose to use the software "Windows Movie Maker." I chose this software because I'm very familiar with it and I find it easy to use. Below is screenshots which shows step by step what I did to create my video.

First I clicked "Click here to browse for videos and photos" and I added all of the images I took of the dolls to movie maker.

I made sure all the images in the storyboard were selected and went into "Video Tools", then I changed the duration to 0.20 to ensure that the images actually looked like they were moving at the right pace and that the video would be 13 seconds long.

Next I went to "Home" and clicked "Add music", and selected the song I wanted on my video.

To change where the music started and stopped I went to "Music Tools", I changed the start point to 320.39s because I wanted a specific part of the song to be in my video. I also changed the Fade in and Fade out to medium so the music would slowly fade in and out at the beginning and end of the video instead of coming in fast and loud.

How I Added Music To My Video

I chose the song "Same Love" by Macklemore and Mary Lambert as my backing music for this video, I chose the song because I think it's bright and happy and fits with the video. To download the song I used "YouTube - mp3", a website which lets you paste YouTube video URLS and download them as an MP3. 

To get this music I went on YouTube and got the song up, I then copied the URL and pasted it into the cache on YouTube - mp3. I clicked "convert video" then right-clicked "download", and saved the MP3 in my music folder on my laptop.

You can see in my Windows Movie Maker tutorial above how I got my music onto the video.

This is my final outcome for my russian doll stop motion video.

Audience Response:

My Nan: "The music goes nice with the video."

My sister: "The glitter on the dolls goes nice against the glitter on the wall, and it's put together well."

Ideas/Planning

Below is a mind map of ideas for my shoot. I knew that I wanted my video to be of the sun either rising or setting, but I decided to go with setting as it was more convinient.

For my second shoot I took lots of pictures of the sky over a time scale of an hour and a half, so the stop motion film would show the sun slowly going down. I set my tripod up in my garden with my camera facing towards the sky. Below is my second stop motion animation video, I decided to go with the song "Yael Naim - New Soul" because it's a really happy and uplifting song which I thought went really well with the video.

Audience Response:

My Mum: "Peaceful and pretty"

My Sister: "I like the music you put on this, it goes well with the pictures"

Evaluation 

Overall I'm not happy with how I worked on this assignment, I should've done a lot more research and planning. The only thing I'm happy with is my first stop motion video, I think the music goes really well and it's well put together. I don't like my second video because it wasn't planned very well. If I could do this assignment again I would put much more planning into my videos and also do a lot more research.

Unit 27 Studio Techniques

Excercise One: Lighting Positions

Key Lighting:

The purpose of the key light is to highlight the form and dimension of the subject. It can be hard (focused) or soft (diffused), and depending on the setup can be placed at different angles relative to the subject. The key light doesn't have to directly illuminate the subject, it may pass through filters, screens or reflectors. 

Fill Lighting:

The purpose of the fill light is to reduce the contrast of a scene, and to get the same amount of detail typically seen by eye in average lighting. Using more of less fill lighting will make shadows lighter or darker than usual.

Brief: "Before you attempt the projects associated with this assignment, you are required to complete the appropriate exercises, which are designed to show learning and understanding of the necessary techniques and skills related to working in a photographic studio. Throughout the exercises and assignment you are to produce a range of images that show correct use and understanding of electronic studio flash systems and appropriate digital camera technique. Evidence will be in the form of colour images presented on your blog. These are to show an appropriate lighting diagram as directed."

One Light Photography

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Two Light Photography

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Project One: Rembrandt Lighting

Rembrandt Research

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in the Netherlands in 1606. His father was a miller, comfortably off and able to send Rembrandt to the town's Latin school. At the age of 14, Rembrandt began studying at the University of Leiden, but academic life didn't suit him. After a few months he left to begin an apprenticeship as a painter. Leiden didn't offer him much in the way of artistic talent, and in 1624, after three years with a local painter, Rembrandt went to Amsterdam to study briefly with Pieter Lastman. He then moved back to Lieden and set up as an independent painter, sharing a workshop with Jan Lievens. 

Rembrandt Style Photoshoot

Brief: "Before you attempt the projects associated with this assignment, you are required to complete the appropriate exercises, which are designed to show learning and understanding of the necessary techniques and skills related to working in a photographic studio. Throughout the exercises and assignment you are to produce a range of images that show correct use and understanding of electronic studio flash systems and appropriate digital camera technique. Evidence will be in the form of both colour and black & white images. All images are to be printed ‘Photo’ quality. Also to be on your blog."


Rembrandt lighting is a lighting technique that is commonly used in studio portrait photography. It can  be achieved using one light and a reflector or two lights. Rembrandt lighting is recognized by the illuminated triangle under the eye on the less illuminated side of the models face. I have shown an example of Rembrandt lighting studio set up below in a drawing.

Contact Sheet:

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Excercise 2: Lighting Ratios

Brief: "Before you attempt the projects associated with this assignment, you are required to complete the appropriate exercises, which are designed to show learning and understanding of the necessary techniques and skills related to working in a photographic studio. Throughout the exercises and assignment you are to produce a range of images that show correct use and understanding of electronic studio flash systems and appropriate digital camera technique. Evidence will be in the form of colour images presented on your blog. These are to show an appropriate lighting diagram as directed."

Light in photography is measured by f-stops. The aperture setting goes up in 1/3 of a stop increments, this is shown in the diagram below.

Studio Lighting Setup Diagram:

Contact Sheet:

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Excercise 3: Photographer Research

Richard Avedon

Born: May 15th 1923; New York

Died: October 1st 2004 (aged 81); San Antonio, Texas

Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half century". In 1944, Avedon began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly endorsed by Alexey Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. In 1945 his photographs began appearing in Junior Bazaar and a year later in Harper's Bazaar. In 1946 Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and Life. He soon became the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar. Avedon did not conform to the standard technique of taking studio fashion photographs, where models stood emotionless and seemingly indifferent to the camera. Instead, he showed models full of emotion, smiling, laughing and many times in action in outdoor settings which was revolutionary at the time. However, towards the end of the 1950's he became dissatisfied with daylight photography and open air locations and so turned to studio photography, using strobe lighting.

"My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph."

"I hate cameras. They interfere, they're always in the way. I wish: if I could work with my eyes alone."

Cecil Beaton

Born: Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton - 14th January 1904; Hampstead, London

Died: 18th January 1980 (aged 76); Reddish House, Wiltshire

Cecil Beaton was an English fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. He was named to the International Best Dressed list hall of fame in 1970.

Beaton designed book jackets and costumes for charity matinees, learning the professional craft of photography at the studio of Paul Tanqueray, until Vogue took him on regularly in 1927. He also set up his own studio, and one of his earliest clients was Stephen Tennant.

His first camera was a Kodak 3A folding camera. Over the course of his career, he employed both large format cameras, and smaller Rolleiflex cameras. Beaton is best known for his fashion photographs and society portaits, he worked as a staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue in addition to photographing celebrities in Hollywood. He was fired from Vogue in 1938 for inserting some tiny but still legible anti-semitic phrases into American Vogue at the side of an illustration about New York society, the issue was recalled and reprinted at vast expense. Beaton returned to England, where the Queen recommended him to the Ministry of Information. He became one of Britain's leading war photographers, best known for his images of the damage done by the German blitz. His career was restored by the war. 

"All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left."

"Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore."

Annie Leibovitz

Born: October 2nd 1949 (age 65); Connecticut, US

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer. In 1970 she started her career as staff photographer working for just launched Rolling Stone magazine. In 1973, publisher Jann Wenner named Leibovitz chief photographer of Rolling Stone, a job she would hold for 10 years. She worked for the magazine until 1983, and her intimate photographs of celebrities helped define the Rolling Stone look. While working for Rolling Stone, Leibovitz became more aware of the other magazines and learned that she could work for magazines and still create personal work, which for her was the most important. She sought intimate moments with her subjects, who "open their hearts and souls and lives to you".

On December 8th 1980, Leibovitz had a photo shoot with John Lennon for Rolling Stone, and she promised him he would make the cover. She had initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon alone as Rolling Stone wanted, but Lennon insisted that both he and Yoko Ono be on the cover. Leibovitz then tried to recreate something like the kissing scene from the couple's Double Fantasy album cover, a picture Leibovitz loved, and she had John remove his clothes and curl up next to Yoko on the floor. Leibovitz was the last person to professionally photograph Lennon, he was shot and killed five hours later.

"One doesn't stop seeing. One doesn't stop framing. It doesn't turn off and turn on. It's on all the time."

"A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people."

Project 2: "In the Style" Portraiture

Brief: "Before you attempt the projects associated with this assignment, you are required to complete the appropriate exercises, which are designed to show learning and understanding of the necessary techniques and skills related to working in a photographic studio. Throughout the exercises and assignment you are to produce a range of images that show correct use and understanding of electronic studio flash systems and appropriate digital camera technique. Evidence will be in the form of colour or black & white images. All images are to be printed ‘Photo’ quality. Also placed on your blog"

The artist I have chosen is Richard Avedon. I decided to recreate his work because I enjoy his studio portraits and find them really interesting. 

Studio Setup:

Dovima in Balenciaga, 1950

Contact Sheet:

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Joan Baez, New York, June 18th 1965

Contact Sheet:

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Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes, New York, December 1955

Contact Sheet:

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Project 4: Still Life Photography

Brief: "Before you attempt the projects associated with this assignment, you are required to complete the appropriate exercises, which are designed to show learning and understanding of the necessary techniques and skills related to working in a photographic studio. Throughout the exercises and assignment you are to produce a range of images that show correct use and understanding of electronic studio flash systems and appropriate digital camera technique. Evidence will be in the form of both colour and black & white images. Your final images are to printed be ‘Photo’ quality, and to be placed on your blog."

Artist Research: Robert Mapplethorpe

Born: November 4th 1946; Queens, New York

Died: March 9th 1989 (aged 42); Boston

Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his sometimes controversial large scale, highly stylized black and white photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still life images of flowers. His most controversial work is that of the underground bondage and sadomasochistic BDSM scene in the late 1960's and early 1970's of New York. Mapplethorpe worked primarily in a studio, and exclusively in black and white, with the exception of some of his later work and his final exhibit "New Colours". His body of work features a wide range of subjects, but his main focus and the greater part of his work is erotic imagery. He would refer to some of his own work as pornographic, with the aim of arousing the viewer, but which could also be regarded as high art. Other subjects included flowers, especially orchids and calla lilies, children, statues, and celebrities including Andy Warhol, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel and Patti Smith. 

"I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand."

"When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I'm human. It's the same thing when I'm behind a camera. I forget I exist."

Studio Lighting Setup:

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Personal Items Shoot

Contact Sheet:

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