the classics personally....

Nick Aardman seems to be the main animator that springs to my mind with classics such as Wallace and Gromit and Morph...

A couple of clips to amuse you... they amuse me greatly! 

However why is it that these characters make us laugh or cry so much?

They are animals? But, it's the animation of the rabbit, with the traits of human mannerisms which makes it able to relate to them and find it hilarious. It's the oneliners, that leaves us quoting them days after viewing the film.

As a bit of an excuse to watch a tonne animated movies I have been watching a selection from movies such as Despicable me to the nightmare before Christmas, The Corpse Bride and Coraline. (I'm a massive fan of the director Tim Burton!) 

Tim Burton films are a brilliant example of Stopmotion animation.

Laughter and lots of legs....

When I am making this animation, I need to consider some actions which are crucial to make sure that my animation looks as realistic as the movements in real life...

Caterpillars

Actual, videos of real caterpillars and millipedes up close to see the actual movement. 

The very hungry caterpillar, a famous story all read to us as a child, this is still a favourite story of mine because it brings back so many memories. However, I forgot how good the animated video was to this story! This video captures the movement of a caterpillar perfectly at 01:46.

Storyboarding...

My animation will commence with lines that appear little by little, creating the nasal area.

Then for the philtrum, and begin the lips.

Then to complete the face the lips are formed. This process will all be done by stop motion animation by drawing the same line a little longer at each frame.

So the music will commence, with a long tuba note at the begginning of the clip the moustache will slide in smoothly.

Then move much like a caterpillar, crawl across the frame. 

Start to curl up and bend due to the change in the pitches of the trumpets and trombones.

The moustache crawls on to the mouth and starts to wriggle like it were alive and the man is finding the whole experience distressing.

The moustache curls up tightly building up tension.

Then the moustache straightens itself out sharply due to the long blast of the trumpet.

The mouth of the man start to laugh thinking that he has his 'moustache' under control.

How wrong he was, the moustache wriggles more and more and rips off his upper lip. It has other plans...

It's off this face, it starts to vacate and crawl off the face.

And dies down as much like the music...

Rayograms

Rayograms originated from the artist Man Ray in the 20th Century who photographed object straight onto light sensitive paper. Using an enlarger to create a negative print, however you can use any light source. But it's traditional to use a darkroom seen as the surrounding are more controlled and you have more control over the exposure of light and depth of field. The paper is held within a certain size of frame, the objects which you are using are placed ontop of the photographic paper. Once the composition is settled to the photographers satisfaction, you run the light for the amount of exposure you have set it for. Normally you would run a exposure test sheet to compare variable exposure and aperture settings. Then the procession of the paper into fixer solutions, washed in baths cleaning the surface and then dried. However in the workshops I used a machine that does it all for me.

Examples of Rayograms (images from Google)

So today I had a go and this method of photographing is very much a trial and error method and todays sessions ended in alot of errors but I took away some experience. Here are my results....

Cutting a shape of a duck out, and exposing it at different distances from the lens changed the clarity of the duck's outline.

This I used the same template, but put a piece of plastic sheet which I crumpled up to give the moving water effect.

Dried flowers.

This is the same method as above but tried to get a better print.

This would have been my best one but it got stuck in the machine. Fail.