For my week 1 assignment, it was my first time utilizing StopMotion Studio to create a project. Although I've seen stop motion animation several times, I've never attempted to create one. Before I began setting up for my GIFs, I knew that I wanted to create one with pencil sketches, and the other one with origami, exploring different mediums for each GIF.
I decided to start with the pencil sketch GIF first. I cycled through several ideas, most of which fell flat. Here are some initial sketch ideas:
I really liked the cloud sketch, and I immediately thought of using stop motion to mimic rainfall. I wanted to animate the character below the cloud, but after drawing the first few frames, I realized that the whole process was much more time consuming and difficult than I imagined. As a result, I changed the character into a flowerpot, so I could create a simple 'growing' effect. For the raindrops, I used pieces of a blue post-it.
After animating the entire scene, I ended up with 51 frames in StopMotion Studio. The scene was 7 seconds long. I was very surprised by the amount of time and work it took to create just seven seconds of animation, and really gained a whole new level of respect for stop motion artists.
I used Kleenex boxes as a tripod :)
The end result was actually much better than I anticipated:
After finishing my first stop motion GIF, I realized how labor intensive the whole process was, so I wanted to simplify my idea for my second GIF. Originally, I had intended to make an origami figure that would walk and jump. I noticed that I still had a lot of blue post it notes, and decided that I should make something smaller instead.
I folded a small paper airplane (which is the only thing I can fold without step by step instructions), and I really liked it. I decided to make the second GIF a small scene with a flying paper airplane. However, midway through, the paper airplane started looking like a bird about to take flight, so I changed my direction and added more birdlike movements. The entire scene ended up being 50 frames, and 7 seconds long (just like the first GIF).
Here is the final result (again, better than I anticipated).
It was a fun and refreshing experience using StopMotion Studio, and it really showed me just how difficult stop motion animation really is. Although I quite like my GIFs, I don't think I would choose to use stop motion animation if I had the option to use other animation techniques (mainly because it is so labor intensive!).