Stop-Motion Character Animation

 

 

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The first thing I did was make the character. He is made with a bendable skeleton made with sturdy metal wires and wrapped with aluminum foil. Afterwards the model was covered with clay. I made the model this way because I had uncertainty if the I might lose shape of the character or accidently breaking the limbs if the model was entirely clay. On a standing pose the character was able to stay up well. But on poses where the character was standing in one foot, a small piece of clay had to be underneath the other foot to support the character. The small piece is edited out by Photoshop after shooting.

After building the model character, I shot reference of myself acting out the scene. For shooting the poses, I was able to twist the body (not efficient but just good enough), keep the body sturdy and standing by itself (most of the time). On the last scene where the character melts, the model is replaced with a different model with all clay so I can easily smash it.

This assignment was slightly difficult because after shooting each frame it is hard to tell how far the body needs to curve or how far the foot needs to travel between each frame. I also had to fix the character if the character bended too much and the clay cracked: which meant I had to take the character off the stage, put tracking markers on the stage and putting the character back hoping it did not shift too much from the previous frame.