Exercise - flick books and animated gifs

 Create some basic animations that involve chases, shoot-outs, or any other staple of the action film. 

I started with a simple flick book.

I struggled to flick the pages steadily so I downloaded the Stop Motion app and watched some instruction videos, I wish that I had access to this technology when my kids were young. Scanning the individual frames into Stop Motion you get this:

It works better like this.

To get the hang of the app I decided to start with a simple animation using existing props, a chase and fight scene between two pairs of scissors.

I made a simple stage area with some boxes and balanced the phone on top. The app has a timer which I set to 10 seconds and moved the scissors without having to touch the phone. This is the smoothest video that I made.

William Kentridge does fantastic animations using charcoal. I was excited by his work when I saw his exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery so its great to have a go at using his techniques to tell a story. For this animation I set the timer to 30 seconds to allow time to redraw the frame. This meant that I didn't have time to get precious about the drawing. I find charcoal difficult to erase but I like the  shadow of the previous drawing which gives atmosphere to the story.

 Although I missed the bottom of the drawing with the line up of the camera you can still get the gist of the story. I think that I need more practice so I poured a pile of glitter onto my stage and moved it around with a brush.

Both of the last two videos are out of focus, the reflected light from the glitter didn't help but I'm not sure what happened with the charcoal.
The whole thing worked better using an old cardboard box as the background.

It's not as jerky and its clearer to see because the charcoal rubs out better on the cardboard.

What I really want to try is the hand activated animation like the Honda Paper advert. I drew lots of runners to improve the quality of the sequence.

Then made a sequence that was activated by infolding a strip of paper.

It's difficult to operate the story and film it at the same time. I made several versions, I think this is the best.

I really enjoyed making all the animations but this method was the most exciting maybe because it still has a handmade feel? Also it creates the illusion of movement whilst not pretending to be anything other than a rapid succession of stills. To do it better I would need an assistant, preferably with more photogenic hands than mine! Also some sort of tripod would help, I hand held my phone or balanced it on a chair or a box which increased the jerkiness of the film. This made it difficult to move with the action and meant that sometimes the action didn't always stay on the same part of the frame.

This film by Daniel Cloud Campos uses stop motion and clothes to make a short action movie. Is he also an OCA student? He has fulfilled the brief and his film is much much better than mine.....

Tutor feedback

This is another learning point. The amount of effort I put in to it seems to have paid off but this is just a starting point and there is loads left to learn.