READING & WRITING
Color can transform anything. Think about it — if you paint a room in your house it can completely change how that space feels and how you feel in it. What about in marketing? If a company uses green in its logo, it might make you feel safe but if they use red it might give you a sense of urgency. Animation is the same; the colors you choose can set the tone for your piece.
Speaking of tone, what exactly does that mean in terms of color? According to Liz Blazer in her book Animated Storytelling, tone, when referring to color, is actually how light or how dark the entire shot looks. Hue is the actual color of something (i.e. red, blue, green, etc). Saturation is how intense that color looks — is it in the purest form of the shade? And then value refers to the relative lightness or darkness of the color itself. If it has a high value it is closer to white.
When it comes to incorporating color into a piece there is a lot to remember but the first step is to create a color script. To do this, you start with one color. That’s it. Determining this is entirely based on a feeling. When you imagine your film/animation what color do you see? Next — create a pre-color script. These are just rectangular color bars that match the big moments in your story. Then you fill in the other colors on your storyboard, with a boiled down palette.
When you are finalizing your colors there is a lot to keep in mind — but one thing that stood out to me is less is more. Too much color is distracting.
Being creative is hard. As someone who has worked in the field for more than 10 years, I can tell you that burnout is real, however I find that my best work comes when I stop caring about getting the perfect idea. In Chapter 6 of Animated Storytelling Blazer outlines what she calls “weird science.” Her message to readers is to experiment! Go against your instincts and even experiment with “bad art.” You may throw out all of these ideas but there may be a winner amongst this “bad” content.
It’s also important to work at the edge of your skillset – meaning you need to get uncomfortable to create work that stands out. When I was a journalism major in college my professor had us complete an “uncomfortable assignment.” We had to put together a story about something that makes us anxious or nervous. I did a story about a tattoo artist (because I hate needles) and it ended up being one of the best things I produced in the class!
RESEARCH TO INFORM
Let’s look at some stop motion examples that inspired me this week, for ICM 504!
Growing up, I was not a huge fan of claymation. Chicken Run is the first movie I remember watching that used this technique and I thought it seemed a little odd. The characters were clunky and the movements seemed a little jerky. Now, I have a new appreciation for this type of animation. This more than 5-minute short caught my attention because of the level of detail. The artist used so many different shots and put in a variety of elements to tell the story. I’m curious to know how many photos they had to take to achieve this final piece.
This one really captured my attention because it uses a variety of techniques. While it uses humans as the characters the background and sets are created using materials (i.e. construction paper for the trees and the sky). Again, I’d love to know how they achieved this because I imagine working with humans for stop-motion is challenging since they move easily! If they budge even a little, you might end up with a jerky shot.
Now that I have seen a few stop motion videos, I am starting to think a little about what I can create. I like this one because it is simple (although maybe not simple to produce) and engaging. Even though it is just about M&Ms, there’s a story here! It’s about an M&M trying to find its place amongst the other candy. I think I’ll create something like this for my test stop-motion.
When I first saw this one, I couldn’t believe it was stop motion. I find this example fascinating because there is so much going on in the scene. First, the slippery man is shaking and then he slips on the silver circle. Rather than just falling to the ground, you see several seconds of him struggling. In addition, you see the clock spinning in the background.
This stop motion is probably my favorite! It tells a story using food and really nothing else. The artist shared some insight into how they made this: “At one point I found myself sitting on the toilet at 2am carving a watermelon into the Earth. Fighting hallucinations, I slipped and stabbed a sinkhole in the Mediterranean and the watermelon imploded.” It must have taken them so much time to create this; especially carving the Earth into the watermelon!
Stop motion is challenging and there are so many incredible examples out there. I love the use of Oreos in this one and how the artist used music to tell the story by stacking and moving the Oreos with the beats of the song.
CREATE
This week was difficult. Coming up with ideas for stories that aren’t too complex, but still have a narrative, was challenging. I created one idea for a linear story and another for a non-linear story. For both of my ideas, I want to use the cut-out technique; so cut out characters from construction paper.
Linear Story Idea
For my linear story, I want to create a short animation about my dog, Crosby, and his friend a hedgehog. At one point, Crosby loses his hedgehog but is later reunited with him at the very end. To do this, I would first cut out a background to set the scene (a tree, grass, the sky, maybe a sun and clouds). Then I would create Crosby and the hedgehog. I’d probably need several versions of Crosby and his friend, since I have a couple of different types of shots in this animation.
I chose this particular story because my dog has always reminded me of an animated character (which is why he is often featured in my work). After looking through a bunch of different stop-motion examples I found that I really enjoyed the cut-out animations best.
I think with this animation, it could be a little tedious because there are many different shots that I would need to create, including changing the sky from day to night. It might be a bit ambitious for my first stop motion.
Non-Linear Story Idea
I am leaning towards this idea for my stop motion. This story is about a young girl who finds a balloon that lifts her into the air for an adventure. I am utilizing the book ending format because it starts with the ending, which might make it a little easier to produce. I saw a cut-out stop motion that involved a balloon during my research phase and immediately latched onto the idea!
For this story, I would again, cut out the different elements from construction paper. When the little girl is in the sky, I think I can move the clouds down, little by little, to show her moving through the space. I would also show her with a frown on her face before she finds a balloon and change it to a smiley face when she finds it, to show the impact this balloon has on her.
Test Stop Motion
Wow – creating stop motion animations is no easy feat. Even this goofy 6-second one that I created.
There are a few things that I didn’t expect before I started the process.
- Lighting: Maintaining consistent lighting was very tricky, because as the sun moved outside the light in the room changed.
- Shadows: You can probably see my arm at some point. Every time I tapped the screen on my phone to take a photo my shadow appeared.
- Using an iPhone: I was only planning to use my iPhone for the test (I’ll use a DSLR for the main project) but the size of the photos from the iPhone did not translate well to Premiere Pro. Once I changed my sequence settings to 1920×1080 I ended up with something that looked really tight on the screen, which is why the ‘T’ is cropped a little. This is what it looked like after I scaled out. I think using a DSLR will help eliminate this issue.
I think this re-affirms that simple is probably better when producing the final stop motion. This CAT animation was 50 photos.
WORKS CITED
Blazer, L. (2020). Animated storytelling: Simple steps for creating Animation & Motion Graphics. Peachpit Press.
Allison Lucas 