Stop Motion Animation has fascinated me ever since I watched the silly and extraordinary Fantastic Mr. Fox film as a child. Watching the colorful characters be weird and try their hardest to be themselves altered my brain chemeistry and encouraged me to be unapologetically myself and "different". I love how they also make mistakes and show the consequences of giving in to the "animalistic" side of themselves. It is simply an incredible art form that takes so much time and precision to create very real characters out of innanimate objects. And this not-so-fantastic at times fox is why I want to create weird and colorful stories that bring meaning to life just like Wes Anderson did.
Now I have been learning how to do stop motion animation myself!! Before actually learning the process though, I decided to explore my creativity and try making different figures. I made a little guy out of wire and beads, and a mini Ponyo out of felt. I also plan on experimenting with clay and paper in the future. Now here's a baby stop-motion run down, and a couple of decisions that need to be made.
1. You need to figure out what you want to animate, which can genuinely be anything from a regular everyday object, to an intricate figurine. 2. Now the number of frames per second you want in the animation, which will be the amount of photos you take for 1 second of animation. 3. When starting you can use a phone or tablet, but I would also reccomend a tripod or something sturdy to rest the device on to avoid shakiness in the final video. I used a free app called Stop Motion Studio that creates the animation as you take the photos. My first stop motion animation was plastic penguins, at 8 frames per sec, on an iphone that's attatched to a shaky tripod.
