needle-felted figure smiling and waving.

Beginnings - Basic Animation

As I mentioned in December 2024’s blog, “The Magic Flight”, I had visited the Tim Burton Exhibition at the Design Museum in London. Whilst there, I bought a really interesting and helpful book called,

“Stop-motion Animation

Frame by Frame Film-making with Puppets and Models”

By Barry J C Purves

If you want to do this professionally, it provides a wealth of history, great examples and practical advice about this subject and even exercises to practise your new skills.

Along with playing around making automata and discovering more stories, I’d like to improve my stop motion films. I don’t have a lot of free time now so I’m hoping to focus on improving the lighting and the background in these. If you want to try some films of your own, I use the “Stop Motion Studio App”.

Stop Motion Studio App

This is a free app with the option of upgrading the features for a one off payment of £5.99. It is just enough for me to enjoy making a film and playing it back immediately. The app provides tutorial videos for the beginner including editing, music and sound effects and using a green screen to change your background. There are also videos about how to make the most of the tools it provides such as time line of the individual photographs, the onion skin which helps you see the position of your previous photograph and changing the speed of your film.

Lighting

One of the problems I’ve had with lighting has been relying on daylight. I’ve made the mistake of treating animation lighting the same as photography lighting. I’ve filmed with light from a north facing window. This is great for a still but I realised that my films look very flat because of this. If I use a south facing window the film appears jumpy and discoloured in places as the sunlight changes as the clouds pass over it. My aim then is to use electric lights which can be clipped at different heights to emphasise the details and textures of my figures. My husband said this figure looks like “Morph”, which wasn’t my intension but I realised, when you are trying to make a quick figure, this is what you end up with.

Background

In “ The Magic Flight” animation, I became aware that if the magician didn’t have the leather fringing on the back of his waistcoat it would have been very difficult to give the impression he was moving at speed. I used a white paper background because of time restrictions. With more time, I would like to have a background, even if it was simply drawn, in order to give the figure something to move through. Again, lighting and shadows would also help with this effect. Even just putting props into the frame helps to anchor the figure to the floor.

Eyes and Body Language

Over the Christmas period, I’ve loved watching the Aardman “Wallace and Gromit” films. In the book I’ve been reading it talks about the importance of expression and body language and keeping it clear and simple. I agree with others that “Gromit” can communicate anything without saying a word. If you have the opportunity to watch Wladyslaw Starewicz’s, “The Story of the Fox” (Le roman de Renard) black and white animation from 1930 on YouTube, it’s a real treasure. It is recommended by Barry J C Purves who points out how expressive the puppets are. |Just be aware it have very dark humour and isn’t suitable for children.

Thank you for reading my January blog. Wishing you all a Happy New Year.