You know when everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong. Yeah thats what working on this project the last few weeks have been. I am here to take you through the last couple of steps of my project and why I will never work with stop motion again until I get a far better grasp of it. This is going to be a long one folks.
Before I left for the holidays I had shown a rough draft of my storyboards to my lecturer. We talked for a bit and I had come out of the session with a full understanding of what would be good to do for this project. Shoot some footage of me and my cousin practacing the fight moves I had illustrated to give me a better understanding of how the characters would react. Record some audio. Complete the figures and paint them. Set up a stage and then animate them.
Then it snowed. Heavy snow all over northern Ireland. It was impossible for my cousin to come over with his camera to shoot the footage. Even when the snow had cleared he had no time left to help me as he had to work on his own projects. He did record audio for me to use but as for test footage went I had to watch footage on youtube of test martial arts fighting. I'm not including any links because there was simply too many of them. None of them had anything I needed as the moves were different or too complicated for me to replicate.
Then came time to get the footage. I had set up a stage in my bedroom.
This seemed alright at first but when I went to shoot the footage I encountered one very big problem. My figures could not remain standinging on one leg for very long. Even when I thought I had posed them just right, just when I'm about to take a shot or repose them they fall over. When they fall over I had to try and pick up the figure and replace it in the exact spot or it would look like my characters had jumped. Sadly I had to start over, though this time I tried blue tac on the characters feet. Sadly I there were still instances of the characters falling over. By the end of day one I had been shooting for 12 hours and had nothing to show for it, needless to say I was furious.
The next day I changed rooms and set up a stage on a table. This worked much better though I still had the occasional incident. The figures had a problem with balancing on one leg. This was most likely due the material not being too strong. I apologise for that but it was all I could afford. Because of the balance issues I had to have my figures perform less impressive stunts than I had initially intended to ensure fewer problems in the long run. In the end I got my footage done. I then began editing. No real incident there.
For editing I used Windows Moviemaker as a change of pace as I hadn't used it before. While not as well equipped as final cut or premier it still allowed for basic editing and was easy to use. Though I have to say this much. I don't like how this short animation turned out. I just became so frustrated when I was taking still shots due to the figures falling down. If I had to do it again I would look more into armature construction and get some stronger wire.
I made another short animation before making this one, to go along with my animation as development work. I used transformers and tried to do it without a stage set up. I used the same camera and editing method but frankly I am more pleased with this test animation than my final piece. I didn't mention this animation earlier because I was listing all the bad things that happened with the main film.
I filmed it on my bedroom floor and used my adjustable ceiling lights. Yes I filmed the whole thing on my floor, my knees and elbows were wrecked by the end of that that. Unlike my main film the transformers rarely fell down though again my figures mostly fell down due to weak material and Transformers (as well as most mainstream figures) are made to be balanced.
So to conclude my final project I have to say this. If given the choice I would not work with stop motion. If I have to do it again and I have to construct the armatures then I will pay the extra amount and buy stronger wire. While I enjoyed making the transformers animation I did not enjoy making the main project. If I had been able to come up with a better idea, or a story for the figures to follow then maybe I would have enjoyed it more.
