Stop Motion Production

For the shooting of the stop motion face paint, we asked Matt, the AV Technician, if we could use his room which he very kindly said yes to. We had access to a white backdrop which was good because that way the focus would be just on the model and the animation going on. Luckily, another animation student, Wing, agreed to be our stop motion model and very patiently sat whilst we painted her face! We settled on what the contents of the animation would be before we actually started, just so that we wouldn't keep Wing sat there for any longer than she needed to be!

We began by having a simple mixture of squares gradually receding up her face, which we the rubbed away from the bottom frame by frame until gone. Through out we had more colour gradually fill her face, and incorporated a mixture of shapes moving across, including dancing lemons! 

We shot this at 12 frames a second and then duplicated each frame. We figured this was something we would be able to get away with due to the method we were going for, also it would have saved us a massive amount of time. Especially considering by the end we had spent nearly a full 6 hour streak getting all of this shot! However it was really enjoyable and flowed well because we took turns with painting and manning the camera. We found that switching roles made everything just a little easier because we were less likely to get restless after doing the same thing for 6 hours. We did also have to take regular breaks because the lights we used were very hot, and we also needed to help Wing refrain from falling asleep!  

Editing!

Emma had the role of editing all of the frames together, so the next day we sat down and looked though everything. We had the unpleasant surprise of realizing that the camera had not been set on wide screen, and also the Auto White balance on the camera, and the red reflections from Molly's jumper meant that the backgrounds often changed slightly in colour. This is something we were frustrated about because it could have been avoided, however we can safely say we learnt from this mistake. This issue was fixable, but it just meant some extra, tedious editing was required!