Katie Coen

Stop Motion I: Pre-Production in Action

Reading & Writing

Chapter 5 of “Animated Storytelling” by Liz Blazer talks all about color and how it can be used to help drive home the idea behind an animation. Blazer says color can communicate the mood of the story and enhance the meaning. When talking about colors in animations, hue is the common color name, like blue or red. Saturation is how intense a color is and value is the relative lightness or darkness. Tone related to value, but it is more about the overall brightness or darkness of an entire scene. A color script can be used when animating to help outline what colors a designer wants to use. They must balance what looks good in each scene with colors that contribute to the story. Pre-color scripts are storyboards represented by rectangular bars with colors that match the big parts of a story. This pre-color script can help decide the colors for the full storyboard. Blazer also gave tips on using colors in animations. She says to limit the color palette and use saturation carefully to avoid overwhelming the audience. She also says to add an unexpected color at an important moment to give it emphasis.

Chapter 6 focuses on the weird science involved in animation and how important it is to experiment. Blazer says experimentation makes every animation better, and it all starts with creating bad art. This helps an artist relax and stop worrying about what people will think. She says to go against your instincts and make a mess to try something new. Then you can add experimental ideas into the storyboards of a project. These experiments can involve technique, design, movement, transitions, sources, sound, and more. Blazer also says making unique animations is what gets artists hired.

Research to Inform

This stop motion animation is a paper cut out animation where the animator moves the pieces of paper to move along the story. It’s a cute story about a dog left alone. I like how the music and sound compliments the animation.
This stop motion animation doesn’t tell a strong story, but it’s fun to watch. It shows a variety of objects moving and transitioning between each other. I like how seamless the transitions are and how creative the animator is with his choice of items.
This animation tries to convince the audience to use less paper to save trees. The sound used throughout helps tell an effective story and helps persuade the viewer to feel a certain way.
This one is all focused on a white board and someone’s hand. This is a highly complex animation because there is constant motion and many things happening at one time in the scene. The transitions are fascinating to watch and keep the viewer intrigued.
This stop motion animation is all based around the movement of Play Doh. The animator formed the Play Doh a little differently for every shot to capture the motion in action.

Create

Stop Motion Animation Pre-Production

After my research, I came up with two ideas for stop motion animations. The first is a linear story, which has a beginning, middle, and end. I chose to show a cloudy sky become a rain storm. Then at the end, the sun comes out. It will be made with paper cutouts and edited with music and sound effects to match the action.

pre-production-summary-linearDownload

My other idea is a nonlinear story using the book ending style. This means the start of the animation looks just like the end. This idea is

pre-production-summary-nonlinearDownload
Stop Motion Animation Test

Using my iPhone and the “Stop Motion Studio” app, I easily created an example of a stop motion animation. I put my phone on a tripod and took pictures through the app as I moved plants along my desk. It helped me get a better understanding of what needs to be done to create a stop motion animation. After editing the pictures together, I can see the camera seems to move a little bit. I think the tripod may have been shaken when moving the plants.

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