Stop-motion Research Evaluation

Human Stop Motion Animation:

The first stop motion animation task we were assigned to do was a human stop motion animation. The reason why we did this was to explore the different possibilities of stop motion animation and be able to introduce to the world of animation. For the task we got into groups of three and were told to make a maximum of ten second video of a stop motion animation do things that you couldn't do normally in film. For our group we did a animation of a man being knocked over and sliding across the floor to which he then knocks himself unconscious against the door, by another man riding on a wet floor sign. One part i like about our animation is the fact you can show more emotion when using humans instead of inanimate objects, for instance in our video you can see the person who gets pushed over face emotionally change when he is getting pushed and this shows that it can portray emotion much more than an inanimate object. Another good thing about the human stop motion animation is that animation we done in the video as the animation is quite smooth and allows people to follow it easily. The third good thing we did with the animation is linked to second reason as with human animation it allows more realistic movement which is what helped us to make the video. But with the video there was some problems as well, one of which does kinda contradict with one of the good points i talked about, but it is only and small part of it which ruins the smoothness for a slight second and that is at the point which is when the man falls over and shows him climbing to floor before actually sliding which is not very realistic and was only done due to time limitation and the fact that using humans for animation can be difficult as patience of the people have to be taken into account as them having  to sometime stay in the same position for ages can be boring and patience intensive so what could of been improved in this is to be more efficient with taking the picture so that the actors do lose patience easily and make the pictures better. The second  thing we could of improved on in this stop motion animation is the continuity in video, its only in one point in the video and is not that noticeable but the man who is on the wet floor sign suddenly disappears after the other person falls to the floor, this was because of the different day we were filming and the fact we changed ideas halfway through, this caused that error. The way we would fix that is to make sure everything is prepared more thoroughly next time and also make sure everyone is on the same page so there is no confusion.

Inanimate Stop Motion Animation:

The second stop motion animation task we did is inanimate object stop motion animation in which we had to create a short video of  inanimted objects moving around and doing whatever we wanted it to do but we had to make sure that more than one thing was moving at a time and we were also allowed to use and material to animate. In my group we decided to use lego to animate as it easy to build characters with it and you can think of many ideas with what to use with it. With the lego we built two characters and also a small set as well. We had a human character and an airplane and with the set it was just two small walls and a spotlight as well. The main plot of the stop motion animation is basically a man running away from the plane and eventually getting killed by it. But with this animation it needed some improvements, one of these is the story and how bleak it was, but that was due to time limitations and our time management skills as well, as we spent most of time making the chacters instead of filming causing us to reduce the story down to what it now is. Another improvement of the video would be the death scene of one of  the characters in the video as it effects the smoothness of the video as in my opinion in seemed to clunky and not as smooth as the rest of the video which is one of the positive of the video. Another positive about the video is editing behind the video itself, as with the editing we added elements that made the video seem more professional, for instance we added a glow in the siren going off the make it seem more realistic and also added black bars to make it seem a bit like a action movie and to try and create a tense atmosphere.  Another thing that good about the inanimate object stop motion animation was the little things you can see in the video, for instance this includes the fact when the man starts to run away you can see both his arms and legs move when he moves to make it seem he is not just sliding across the floor and makes the movement realistic.

Lip Syncing Stop Motion Animation:

The last stop motion animation task we have to do was lip syncing animation to which we did this to be able to test out abilities on syncing things up with post the production of the project and realise some of the difficulties that can happen during stop motion animation. In our group we were allowed to make any sort of animation we want as long as one of the characters in the video said "Lego of me". In our group we just made a random Lego man who gets tackled by a giant frog and the man says the phrase "Lego of me".  A thing we did need to improve in the video is defiantly like the others was the time management of the project as we had even less time than the other to create this stop motion animation as well as we also need to improve some of the lip syncing animation part of the video as it did some what fit with the audio it did take a few attempts to try  sync it and also record the actual line and link it the paper mouths we used to show the character speaking. But there was obviously good things even though we had low amount of time to actually film it, for instance the story of the video was creative and could of been even better, if we had more time to make the production. Another good thing about the videos is animation of the frog at the beginning of the video as we had to work the camera angles just right so we could get the right effect to make the actions look good. 

Conclusion: 

With being  able to use each of these different animation types and be able to see how they can be used has helped me figure out what sort of thing i want to do with the assessed esting . The stop motion animation techniques i want to take towards my esting are both humane and inanimate object animation. The reason for me picking these is because both of them have their strengths and weaknesses, but if they are put together in the right way they could be a great combinations and open a possible new way of creating an esting  that could work in the right hands.