Coursework - Our stop motion animation

Stop Motion Animation;  

Nemo animation

Our task was to create an animation - We were told to think of a short storyline which included scenery and characters.  We were given  play'doh and plasticine and a few other craft bits to help us make our setting, characters and props. 

We firstly brainstormed storylines on what we could do our animation on, including the ideas of sunsets, machinery,  jungle with a variety of different animals in but we finally settled on the idea of an ocean with a few simple fish, a sun and a boat and a plane. This developed into taking the characters out of 'Finding Nemo' and 'Finding Dory' to use in our own animation as the fishes, whilst including a sun with glasses, an areoplane and a boat. These characters and props where all created by moulding Play-Doh in just half an hour and stuck on the paper plate. Once we had figured out our plot an what equipment was going where (for example the characters and props), we put the camera on the tripod and fixed it into position so we could start taking photographs. Lily and myself where in charge of arranging the play-doh on the plate whilst megan takes the photographs. Overall, my group and i reckon that we atlas took around 150 photos for the animation before putting it together on the software premiere pro. 

I personally really enjoyed doing this stop animation as i had never created my first stop motion animation, and hopefully not my last. Despite the fact it took a lot of patience, time and dedication in this short animation, i loved working towards the final video. I think these skills and shots could be combined into our upcoming coursework, however i know not all films as it would be unrealistic considering the time you need to spend on it. 

Before working on this animation we were told, for homework, to look at and research previous animations that had been made. For example we looked at Jan Svankmajer and Wallace and Gromit. I personally found Svankmajer's work very unusual and weird but creative and effective at the same time. I have a lot of admiration for Wallace and Gromit as i know how much time and effort goes into a stop motion, and considering their films are about 1 hour 30 to 2 hours, it must have taken around 3 years. Conversely ours was just 7-8 seconds long which took 1 hour 30 to create. 



  When set the task, I instantly wanted to create something that included fish swimming in the ocean. I had seen  an animation similar to what I wanted to create, previously to this task and was really inspired to  make something alike. Once I had created a plot, I thought it would be wise to use the classic characters of Nemo and Dory from finding Nemo and finding Dory. 

to my animation i moulded play-doh to make ocean like features, for example the fish, the see, the boats and the sun/sky. Once I had finished moulding the characters and props, I then started to take photos to ultimately make our film animation.