Project Discovery

After our whiteboard experience, we sat down to work out our next adventure.

Many coffees later, we decided to create a wire armature of a human and somehow try to bring him to life with stop motion.

Due to time and space restrictions- we had to keep it simple. Also this essentially was our first time on a stop motion project, so we wanted the emphasis to be on the learning rather than giving ourselves too much of a struggle.





I went on my merry way researching armature making and viewed loads of other peoples simple armature stop motions and Julie went to work on 'The Schedule' - this alone opened my eyes to the world of the DFTV (Digital Film and Television) school. No stone was left unturned! Julie worked out a strict time schedule including set up and get out. We had a live action shoot scheduled for a an evening - 5pm to 9pm and 2 weekend shoots (sat & sunday) for the stop motion. the schedule detailed lunch and tea breaks - I was impressed. Although when it came to it, we took our breaks to coincide with the camera battery running out :D
We also needed to bring an editor and and someone experienced in sound design on board.

First things first! -
We fleshed out the storyboard.
The idea we came up with - artist working on a wire armature was called away suddenly - after she leaves the armature magically comes to life and explores his surroundings like a new born babe. We used the idea of an artists studio to create a colourful interesting background. We included props like a mirror and a whiteboard ,thinking to add different elements into the film.
I sourced the items for the set thinking of colour and shape and also considering how an artist would have her desk set.

The set!

learning to move wire

a measured walk

marking each step

we had to tally mark every set of photos we took to make sure we had enough shots for each action - at the start I didn't really understand how quickly it would run, so the initial filmings had to be redone as it went too fast. each movement has to be TINY.


tally marking

working to schedule
Important considerations

marking out the set for continuity

tiny armature movements

I would use a completely different armature the next time and create a base from which to move them on to provide stability. My next armature will have hinges. I found the armature I was using wasn't really up for the manipulation it was being subjected to and it began to loose it initial shape. Also at times , i would move the left arm and the right arm would move too. Sometimes I had to over move the arm to get it to move and ultimately the pelvis/spine connection began to fail causing wire to bend forward like an old man. Thankfully I made a duplicate! This was a learning experience -

- LIGHTS!

-CAMERA!!-

-ACTION!!!


So to conclude.. images went to Ali our editor, who managed to piece it all together to produce a 3min stop motion animation. Sound and musical score was also added.
3mins of final footage from approximatley 20hours of hard work on the movement of wire and taking of photos.
We had a slight problem initially, where occasially the picture would shudder due to the movement of actually taking the photo, luckily an experienced editor happened to be watching and knew of a way to crop some of the frames to fix it, however next time I would use a remote to take the shots.

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