Stanley the Weiner dog

Here was my first attempt and claymation. I ran into some trouble with this one.  First the clay I used wasn't the best so, after being under stage lights for a couple hours he began to fall apart.  I didn't really have a story to go along with this. I had little idea of what I was doing.  However, I have learned from my mistakes and am planning on doing a bigger production this semester. As for Stanley; while he was a good projector I don't see him making a reappearance in any of my future work.

To make Stanley I had to build a skeleton (called an armature) out of metal wire and cover him with clay.  He is setup on a large table  and a bunch of still shots are taken.  There isn't much complexity to this one so once again enjoy.

Skeleton Strip poker

The next animation that I did is a technique called rear-lighting.

Like a cut-out animation the basic principle is to use paper cut outs. This time though they are placed and a slightly transparent surface and lit from behind making the cut-out appear as silhouettes.

I completed this around October so I decided to go with a Halloween theme.  What I came up with is the basis of skeletons playing strip poker.  You have the one skeleton who deals out the cards, they all examine what they have. After they lay down we find that the smallest is the loser so in payment the other 2 take his head.

To make the characters I printed skeleton decorations from online, cut them out, and glued them to a harder paper.  I ran into some difficulty as the surface I had to animate on was much smaller than I had previously anticipated.  So it became a challenge to fit all 3 characters in the frame. 

It ended up being just over 10 seconds long, and I hope you enjoy it.

Ninja Phil! My First Animation

I have been in film school for the last couple of years, and this time around I decided to try my hand at animation.  

For my first project I was assigned to do produce a 10 second animation using cut-outs.  The basic theory is to use construction paper to cut out little puppets.  You then move them a little bit and take a picture, move them slightly more, and take another picture.  To produce 10 seconds I had to repeat that process 300 times, which may not seem like too many but it takes several hours worth of work.

For Ninja Phil I made two puppets out of construction paper. I have a ninja and a girl.  Now the ninja is in love with the girl and wants to take her away, so he climbs over the wall and drops down near her.  At this point she thinks that he has come to kill her but instead of producing a sword he pulls out a bouquet of flowers.  I was originally going to do something a little more complex, but didn't quite have the time.  The Background is simply two pieces of scrapbooking paper one cut to look like a hill. The wall is also made out of scrapbook paper cut to look like rocks and glued on a piece of construction paper.

Next time I will go into a little more depth on the creation process, such as pictures of the animation stand where I work.  

For now just sit back and enjoy the show.