The assignment for the first animation class was to create a 30 seconds stop motion animation. As a team we discussed about what kind of materials we wanted to use in order to tell a story and we decided to work with clay. The storyboarding process helped us to decide which narrative elements we wanted to incorporate in our piece. As part of the scenery we decided to use electronic components in order to create a city in the background and we decided to keep the people moving in the background as a metaphor of ourselves being at ITP and not letting others to influence too much on our personality.
Scenary setup with electronic components simulating a city
The scenery setup was crucial in order to communicate our story therefore we dedicated quite some time making it look the way we planned. It was also very important to dedicate time to setup the camera and the lights as well as the animation characters.
Camera and scenery setup
A s a team we decided to take turns to take the pictures and move the elements as well as directing the whole process following our initial storyboard. Having previously defined the sequence of the movements and emotions that we needed from each character was crucial in order to keep track of the movement of the elements.
Shutting process
The final result is an stop motion animation of characters made up of clay that takes place in a miniature world created with electronic components. The sound design was divided in two different components: background song and sound effects. The layering of the sounds was crucial in order to help our characters communicate their emotions.