Friday, November 21, 2014

Stop Motion Has Literally Stopped Motion

Hey guys, my class has been assigned a group assignment that is a stop motion project. I am working with three incredible animators to create our story. If you want to check out some other things going on with this project check out my partner and friend Kelsie Wilt.


We were inspired by the stop motion music video Morning Elegance that was all shot with the emphasis of stop motion. Our idea deals with a girl having a nightmare that is represented by black sheets that continue to try and capture her. The difficult part of this animations the song we were hoping to put the animation to is four minutes and thirty- five seconds, which would mean we would have to take over 5,000 pictures. We decided to cut the song to two minutes which meant we only needed to take around 1,000-2,500 pictures.




I am hoping to get this project all set up and ready by the middle of next week. Our biggest problem is not having the bed or sheets, we are trying to get some loaned to us, so we don't have to establish a budget that is looking like it would be around $90 for just the sheets. Hopefully we can get a king sheets set and king mattress ready for shooting next week. 



We worked a whole week on the storyboard and it was a hard and long process. 















We had to go through the music second by second and plan out every frame, thankfully most of Kelsie Wilts past projects have incorporated this in-depth storyboarding music sync. 


In the story, a girl is running from her nightmares and is given a sense of hope by a horse that comes to save her. We had done a few tests with the sheets to see what it would look like and it looked awesome! 
We were hoping to be finished around this week, but that did not happen. 



Our stop motion project had not worked out because of time and material issues. We began to think of a new idea with only two days left to work on the project, so we re-started our project with a new idea.





Our new idea is a text message coming out of a phone, but it comes our as a note instead of a normal "cyber" message. The first note says "You Matter" and it crawls around the school, and to our good friend Mike's phone. Then Mike sends another message the same way that says, "UR 2 LegiT 2 Quit" that goes back to our teacher, Mr. Netterville  and he was happy to receive it. 



Our pre-production process for our new idea started with the idea of spreading kindness throughout our school. We had two students suddenly pass away last week and I felt that kindness is the only way to help people recover during this hard time.


We also wanted to add a fun kind of twist to the end by incorporating our animation teacher receiving the text in the end of our project.

We story boarded in a day, and shot the project in two days. This made our group very stressed and very articulate with everything we did. We moved the note card very slow, which took us even longer to shoot.


On the way of making this project I learned that we need to have all the appropriate materials and time before starting the project. Over time, I felt that our group was honestly ready to rip each others hair out and we started to get on each others nerves, but we made it through.


For my next stop motion project, I will check what time I have until the project is due and get the materials collected before you get set on an idea. My biggest problem is that once I get a really good idea, I get my mind set on it, and I do not want to change my idea at all. I need to work on expanding my ideas and projects to make them more entertaining to not just me, but my audience.
















Our team 



Kelsie Wilt was one of our two project managers. She helped come up with the original idea and the new idea. She also drew up all the storyboards. She is a hand drawn animator than a stop motion or 3D animator, but she brought a lot of skills to our team and our project.



Mike Webster was our technical director. He would move the card around the floor for us to shoot, he also helped convince Mr. Netterville to have us put note cards on him.







Hasset Habt was our behind the scenes. She helped add her own twists and ideas to our project. She really helped out during the post production process, but was not as involved in our production or post production






Chloe Kraus (This Blogger) was one of our two project managers and director of the project. She helped come up with the new and old project ideas. She also was the cinematographer for the project, and had to move notecards when they are at Mr. Netterville's desk.

















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